Nearly $140,000 in total.
Every transaction appeared to have been authorized using Laura’s credentials.
When I confronted her, she stared at the statements as if she had never seen them.
“I didn’t do this.”
I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because I was angry enough to mistake disbelief for confidence.
“Your password. Your authorization.”
“Grant, I swear to you—”
Then came the photographs.
An envelope appeared at my office.
Inside were pictures of Laura entering a boutique hotel outside Durham.
In one photograph, she was beside a tall man.
In another, the two appeared to be walking through a side entrance together.
The man’s face was hidden.
Laura’s was partially turned away.
But the coat was hers.
The bag looked like hers.
The hair was hers.
I confronted her that night.
She denied it.
Then my late mother’s diamond necklace disappeared.
It had been locked inside the safe in our bedroom.
My younger cousin Serena had recently moved into our guesthouse after what she described as a “messy breakup.”
She had been staying with us for nearly two months.
It was Serena who suggested searching Laura’s closet.
“Just to clear her name,” she said.
