Chapter 8 - The break-in that wasn’t
The Hales reported a burglary six months before the funeral.
Rear window broken.
Desk drawers opened.
Laptop missing.
Some jewelry untouched.
Richard said Emily became frightened afterward.
True.
But police reviewing the old case found a problem.
The broken glass lay mostly outside the house.
That suggested the window had been broken from inside.
The original responding officer noted it.
No one followed aggressively because the missing laptop belonged to Richard’s company and the company declined to pursue.
Now the detail looked different.
Emily had used that laptop two days earlier.
She told Claire—me—that she had copied “something ugly.”
I did not understand.
She had discovered unusual payments routed through a vendor called Northcross Facilities.
About $186,000 over eighteen months.
Large enough to matter.
Not enough to be a multinational fraud thriller.
The vendor was connected to a former employee of Richard’s company.
Emily suspected Richard was hiding kickbacks.
May you like
Whether she was right remained unclear.
But someone wanted that laptop gone.
