Chapter 15 -- Hard Choice
Thursday December 29
The trip home seemed to take forever. Whenever I wanted to be somewhere in a hurry, LA traffic reared its ugly head. Then the plane I was on had mechanical problems, and we had to switch to another flight. That meant that I lost my first-class seat and was sent to the back of the plane in a middle seat. It was either that or wait another day to get home. We landed in Chicago in the early morning, so traffic sucked getting out of the city.
When I finally got home, I found my mom, Angie, and Caryn in the kitchen.
"Good, you're home. Your dad should here be soon," Mom said.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"Just wait until your dad gets here," Mom said.
Tim had invited me over before dinner so we could plan the upcoming week. Lexi had come up with some ideas for things we could do on our trip. The whole family arranged to meet us at our house for dinner tonight.
I missed my kids like crazy. My mom had decided to keep them in daycare, despite Peggy being on break. Mom reminded me what it was like to watch them all at the same time, so I didn't complain, even though we'd hired someone new to help. I'd wanted to swing by daycare to see them, but my mom had sent me a text to tell me to come straight home.
"Do I need to tell Tim I won't be over?"
"Probably not," Angie said, not really giving me an answer.
I sent Tim and Wolf a text to let them know I was being held captive. My mind was going a mile a minute as I tried to figure out why Angie was here and how it tied into Mom, Dad, and Caryn. I was happy when the front gate opened, and Dad finally got home. Caryn waited until he'd joined us before she began.
"Megan gave a report on the financials at our weekly staff meeting. We found an anomaly."
I looked at Dad, and he didn't look happy. I worried that someone had stolen money.
"Over the last two days, our GoFundMe pages for the two charities have been receiving donations," Caryn shared.
I was confused.
"That's good, right?" I asked.
"Normally, I would agree. We average about seventy-five hundred a month for the cancer charity and twenty-five hundred for teen moms," Caryn said, confirming what I knew. "Since Monday, both charities have pulled in ten thousand each, all small donations, with none greater than five hundred dollars."
"Did we send out a fundraising letter or get some publicity of some kind?" I asked.
"I asked the same thing," Dad said.
"No, we haven't done anything special to spur donations. I had Megan pull the donor list for me. Normally, very few donations are made anonymously. All of these have been," Caryn said.
"Then your mom got this," Dad said as he handed me a heavy-duty envelope.
It was sent to the attention of my mom for her charity. I checked, and there was no return address. I opened it, and inside were stacks of hundred-dollar bills with five-thousand-dollar bands around them. On the top was a typed note that said, 'Hope this helps your charity. Go Blue!'
"Did you count it?" I asked.
"That's twenty-five-thousand dollars," Mom answered.
I looked at Angie.
"Where's yours?" I asked.
Everyone's head snapped around and stared at her. Angie blushed.
"It's in the car," she admitted.
"Go get it," Dad said, leaving no room for Angie to back out.
"We need to talk about that at some point," Mom said after she left.
Angie came back in and handed over her envelope. Dad looked inside and then at her.
"Why has one of the bands been broken?" Dad asked.
"I took a couple hundred dollars to buy groceries with," she said sheepishly.
"If you're short of money, all you have to do is ask, and you know we would help you," Mom said, concerned.
That made Angie blush even more. I think everyone knew that Angie made enough to cover her bills. From the way she acted, we all knew she hadn't been short of cash. I made sure of that when she came to me and asked for a raise last spring. I'd also just prepaid for a bunch of massage certificates for Greg's business to help them have extra money for Christmas. Angie was just being Angie. I bet Greg would be furious when he found out that she had taken funds designated for the charity. I knew I was, but I had to set that aside for the moment.
"Let's focus on what matters. Who is all this money coming from, and why did we just receive seventy thousand dollars in donations?" I asked.
"My first and last thoughts were recruiting," Dad said. "When Caryn called me about the small donations, I thought they might be coming from Oklahoma. The guy who stopped you at the restaurant seemed a little shady. Then the note said 'Go Blue,' which made me think Michigan. I dug a little and discovered that Southwest Central State is called the Big Blue Machine."
I said a really bad word, and no one even flinched.
"This gives that douche at the NCAA his excuse to cause problems," I explained.
"What are you talking about?" Mom asked.
"I told you about the investigator and his threats if David didn't 'cooperate.' He wants David to help expose what Springbok and Southwest Central State are up to as far as paying recruits to play for them," Dad reminded her.
"So?" Mom asked. "I thought you got him to back off."
"More; I called his bluff. I told him that I wouldn't help with their investigation, and he could basically go pound sand," I confessed.
Mom gave my dad a look that said he might have left some of the details out. He raised his hands in surrender.
"Hey, you would've been proud of him. He took charge and never lost his cool. David made it clear that he'd made his one attempt to get them to slip up. That was when he met with Coach Foster for his in-home visit," Dad said, defending both himself and me.
"I guarantee you Stewart Chadwick will use this to bone me," I reiterated.
"He didn't look happy when he left," Dad admitted.
"That being said, it looks like we need to deal with this," Caryn said to get us back on track.
"Why don't we just take the money and act like it was just a donation?" I suggested.
