Chapter 18: The Smear
The call came at nine fifteen on Monday morning, while Nora was reading scholarship renewal letters.
"Ms. Wexford? This is a reporter with the Tribune. Do you have five minutes?"
"I have five minutes," Nora said. "Are we on the record?"
"That is up to you."
"Then we are on the record," she said. "Please quote me exactly."
He paused. "I will. Someone has given me the bank's version, and I wanted your response before it runs."
"Given by whom?" she asked.
"I cannot name a source."
"You do not have to," Nora said. "Tell me the version."
"It goes like this," he said. "A founding family member, unhappy with the building lease, has manufactured a fee scandal to force renegotiation. The phrase used was disgruntled heiress."
Nora set down her pen. "What would you like from me?"
"A response. Is the audit about the rent?"
"No," she said. "The audit concerns trust accounts and fees, under a clause in the 2009 sale agreement. The trust may demand an independent audit once in a decade. We invoked it in writing on Friday."
"The source also said you staged the deposit," he said. "A six point four million dollar check, carried in personally, for a scene."
"I deposited a certified check at my grandfather's bank," Nora said. "At Counter Nine, in order, during business hours. Courtesy at a counter is not a scene."
"Will you comment on heiress as motive?"
"Only that I have a job," Nora said. "I run a foundation. The trust income behind our scholarships is part of what the audit will examine."
"It is a responsibility, not a motive," she said. "The trust invoked a contractual audit. We will cooperate fully, and we expect the bank to do the same."
When she hung up, she opened the small green notebook and wrote the time, his outlet, and her own words. She had just closed it when Peter called.
"Have you seen it?" he said, without greeting.
"Seen what?"
"Two blogs have it, and a finance newsletter. Disgruntled heiress. Manufacturing a scandal. They are trying you in print because they cannot answer the numbers."
"I spoke to a reporter ten minutes ago," she said. "On the record."
"Good. Now let me speak to one. I will call it theft, because that is what eleven point three million dollars over nine years is."
"No," Nora said.
"No?"
"If you accuse them in print today, tomorrow the story is two families shouting. The numbers become one claim among many. We do not trade accusations, Peter."
"He stole from Dad's trust," Peter said. "He stole from students. I am supposed to be polite about vocabulary?"
"You are supposed to protect the audit," she said. "Angela has the totals. The auditors will have the ledgers. Dad fought with documents."
"So we say nothing while they call you a liar for sport?"
"We say what we said on Friday, in the lobby, with a stamped receipt," Nora said. "Nothing more until the records speak."
"You sound like him," Peter said at last, quieter. "Fine. No calls. But I am coming at noon with lunch, because you will forget to eat."
"That I will accept," she said.
At eleven, the Foundation's board chair asked for an urgent call, and Nora took it with the door closed.
"I have had three donors on the phone," the chair said. "One asked whether the Foundation is under investigation. Another asked whether scholarship checks will clear this term."
"They will clear," Nora said. "Foundation accounts are separate from the trust accounts under audit, and every grant this term is already funded."
"Can you promise me there is no risk to the students?"
"I can promise no student will lose a scholarship because of a newspaper story," Nora said. "If a donor pauses a gift, the reserve covers this term in full."
"And next term?" the chair asked.
"Next term depends on honest accounts, which is why the audit matters," she said. "Tell donors the truth: the trust exercised a contractual right, in writing, through counsel."
"They want a statement from you. Something stronger. Something that answers this heiress story directly."
"I understand the wish," Nora said. "I will not feed a story built to move attention from ledgers to my character. If I point to the audit, we lose nothing."
"The board is nervous, Nora."
"Then let the board be nervous in private and steady in public," she said. "Send any donor who calls to me. I will take every call myself."
Afterward, she stood at the window. Her phone lit with a message from the reporter: the bank had declined to comment, and his editor asked whether she wished to add anything.
Nora typed her reply slowly, read it twice, and sent it.