Chapter 5
The board chair, a soft-spoken man named Russell Pratt who had served on the company's board since before I was born, stood from his seat at the far end of the table. "Grant, the board will need to meet in emergency session tomorrow morning. Given the scope of what Naomi has just outlined, I expect that meeting will result in your immediate removal as president and a referral to the district attorney's office for prosecution."
What followed in the months after that dinner unfolded with the complete, unhurried thoroughness that only comes from someone having done the work properly before the confrontation rather than during it.
Grant was removed from Mercer Civic Development the following morning, exactly as Russell Pratt had predicted. The board's internal investigation, building on my audit, ultimately identified one point three million dollars in total misappropriated funds — more than my preliminary figure, once Naomi's team finished tracing two additional shell entities Grant had set up using Mallory's maiden name. He was indicted on charges of wire fraud and embezzlement fourteen months later. He pleaded guilty to a reduced set of charges rather than risk trial, and was sentenced to thirty-one months in federal prison along with restitution obligations that, combined with the civil judgment the company pursued separately, effectively consumed everything he and Mallory owned, including the house, both cars, and Mallory's family's vacation property in the Outer Banks, which had been used as collateral on a loan connected to one of the shell companies.
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Mallory filed for divorce eight months into the investigation, before the indictment was even finalized. She kept primary custody of their children and moved to her sister's home in Maryland. I do not know what she knew about the scheme before it collapsed, and I have chosen, deliberately, not to ask either of her children about it, because they are not responsible for what their father did and I did not want them carrying my questions on top of everything else they were already carrying.
My father stepped back from day-to-day operations at Mercer Civic Development within the year, citing health reasons that were partially true and partially, I think, simply the exhaustion of having discovered what his eldest child had been doing under his name. The board asked me to take the company's president position eleven months after that dinner. I accepted, on the condition that an independent compliance officer be permanently established as a standing position reporting directly to the board rather than to me or to any single executive — a structural change designed specifically to make sure that what Grant did could never happen again undetected for fourteen months.
