Approved At 9:31

"Give me your keys, Dessa."

Dale Perrin had come out of the back office with his tie loose and his reading glasses pushed into his hair. He was the night manager, sixty pounds too heavy for the job and three years from a pension, and he was not looking at me. He held out his palm the way you hold it out to a dog you are not sure about.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because Mr. Brannock asked for you to be off the desk while he talks with our guest." Dale kept his voice low. "Take your break. Take the money. Please."

"Who authorized the payment, Dale?"

"It's a staff bonus. He said."

"It came from the Larkspur Court tenant trust."

That got his attention. He looked at my phone, and I turned it so he could read the banner without touching it. His mouth moved on the word trust.

Behind us, Brannock had walked Ingrid Halvorsen to the lounge chairs by the fireplace, one hand hovering at her elbow, and was pointing at a framed photograph of the old rail yards and taking credit for the whole hotel. I had about a minute.

"Pull up the payment screen," I said. "The one on the tablet."

"I don't have to show you the back office."

"You do if your name is on it."

Dale stared at me for three long seconds. Then he lifted the tablet from beneath the counter and woke it with his thumb. The hotel's payment dashboard opened in blue and white. He scrolled past guest refunds and vendor invoices, and his thumb stopped.

A batch sat at the top of the list. Staff relocation bonus, 1 payment, $6,850.00. Status: approved. Approved by: D. PERRIN. Time: 9:31 p.m.

"That's not mine," Dale said.

"Your name is on it."

"I was in the kitchen office counting the bar drawer at nine thirty. I never opened this." He typed something, deleted it, typed again. Sweat had started at his hairline. "Somebody used my login. Somebody who sits on the second floor and has my password because I wrote it on a sticky note under the keyboard like an idiot. Mr. Brannock's people run every company he owns through our portal, so one login moves money for all of them."

"Then you know who."

"I know I approve about forty of these a year, and I have never once approved one for a tenant in a building I don't manage." He put the tablet down, very carefully. "If that money came out of a court account, Dessa, it went through my name."

The screen dimmed. The last thing I saw before it went dark was my own unit number, printed at the bottom of the approval in tiny gray letters: 3C.