Chapter 11 - THE FOUNDATION OF LIES
The foundation's public materials contained smiling photographs of young mechanics and promises of trade-school scholarships.
Some of the children were real.
Some of the photographs had been taken from unrelated school websites.
There was no reliable evidence that the advertised scholarships had actually been awarded.
The money instead flowed through consulting payments, property deposits, and restaurant invoices.
Nora traced one payment to the down payment on Marjorie's house.
Another had bought an expensive vehicle for Ethan.
A third paid months of rent on an apartment I had never known existed.
I asked Martin for the address.
"Before you go there, we need to know whose name is on the lease," he said.
The tenant was a woman named Allison Reed.
She worked for the foundation as its administrative coordinator.
I expected an affair.
What I found was more humiliating.
Allison had been told I was Ethan's estranged sister, an unpredictable woman who had stolen money from the family.
She believed Ethan was a widower raising funds in his late father's memory.
When Nora showed her our marriage certificate, Allison went still.
"He said Lydia was a relative who harassed him," she whispered.
Allison had handled mail, arranged meetings, and maintained appointment calendars.
She also had access to invoices that made no sense to her.
She agreed to speak to the investigators and preserve her correspondence.
One email contained instructions from Ethan to move a payment before "G changes the locks."
The date was the day my father confronted him at the garage.
Another message referred to a package that had to be delivered to "the nurse."
Allison could not identify the nurse.
She did remember seeing Ethan meet an older woman wearing hospital scrubs near the office.
Marjorie was not the only woman my husband had enlisted.
But before Allison could hand over her work laptop, the apartment building's fire alarm went off.
Downstairs, smoke poured from a rubbish bin near the parking entrance.
The alarm emptied the building.
When we returned, Allison's apartment door was ajar.
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Her laptop was gone.
