Chapter 6 - DIANE'S LIST
Diane admitted it.
Thomas had left hundreds of messy files.
No twelve-house list.
No R code.
Those were Diane’s system.
After his death, she spent months comparing:
customer copies,
city records,
Carter Residential archives,
and warranty complaints.
She identified twelve addresses where something did not align.
Why take responsibility herself?
“Because NorthVale didn’t care.”
Sarah objected.
“We acquired the files. You never gave us this list.”
“I gave you boxes.”
“You did not tell us what you believed was wrong.”
Diane looked at Mark.
“I thought they would bury it.”
Why?
NorthVale had paid only a modest amount for Carter Residential’s assets.
Thomas’s reputation, in Diane’s mind, was worth more than the purchase price.
She feared NorthVale would:
blame old Carter crews,
write off repairs,
and publicly distance itself.
So she kept the problem.
At first, she did nothing.
Then a homeowner called about a draft near a vent.
Diane remembered the address was on her discrepancy list.
She sent Cal.
He fixed it.
No complaint.
That success taught her the wrong lesson.
Quiet correction works.
Then another.
Then another.
Each time Diane told herself she was protecting homeowners and Thomas.
Mark asked:
“Did you ever charge them?”
“No.”
“Did you profit?”
“No.”
Cal confirmed Diane paid him from her own savings.
Over three years:
$18,700.
Mark stared.
She was spending money, not making it.
That did not make the trespass acceptable.
It made the motive stranger.
Diane was paying to maintain a dead man’s reputation.
Then Sarah reviewed the seven homes Cal entered.
Some corrections were genuinely useful:
weather seals,
vent covers,
minor hardware replacement.
Others were unnecessary because the file discrepancy did not reflect actual work.
Diane had treated paperwork uncertainty as a physical problem.
Then Mark asked about the other five homes.
Not yet visited.
His was one.
East Ridge 214 had no key.
Why keep it on the list?
Diane said:
“Because that was where Thomas started lying to himself.”
Mark stared.
“What does that mean?”
After the Harper dispute, Thomas privately blamed a foreman named Raymond Pike.
He said Raymond submitted the premature completion certificate.
Raymond denied it.
He quit.
Years later, after Thomas died, Diane found the original login audit.
The certificate had been uploaded under Thomas’s own credentials.
Mark went still.
“Dad filed it?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Diane never confronted him.
He was dead when she found it.
She decided someone else could have used his office computer.
Then she found a handwritten notebook entry:
E214 — I SENT IT TOO EARLY. FIX BEFORE REVIEW.
Mark closed his eyes.
Thomas knew.
Not a giant fraud.
A specific corner cut under deadline.
Then Diane whispered:
“If East Ridge was his fault, I had to know whether the other files were too.”
That was why she built the twelve-house list.
Not only to protect Thomas.
To investigate him privately.
Then Mark asked:
“What did you find?”
Diane looked at the black bag.
“Four of the twelve may involve the same thing.”
“Early certificates?”
“Yes.”
“By Dad?”
She nodded.
Then Sarah said:
“If that is true, NorthVale needs the complete files now.”
Diane shook her head.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because one of the four is not a customer house.”
Mark frowned.
“What is it?”
Diane looked at him.
“Your sister’s.”
Mark froze.
May you like
His younger sister Hannah had bought a Carter-built home three years before Thomas died.
And nobody had told her she was on the discrepancy list.
