Chapter 4 — The President’s Office

“The president’s office,” Evan repeated.

Mara stood beside his desk. For the first time since they had met, she looked as if she wanted to leave the room.

His assistant, Priya Shah, turned the printed access report toward him.

“The login came from a desktop assigned to Mara’s office suite,” she said. “That tells us where the file was opened. It doesn’t tell us who sat at the computer.”

“Who can get into the suite?” Evan asked.

Mara answered before Priya could. “My executive assistant. Two administrative staff. Facilities, when we request them. And anyone I let in.”

“Was Graham Voss there yesterday?”

“No.”

“Was Caroline?”

Mara took a breath. “Yes.”

Priya looked up from the report.

“She came to see me about the East Hall meeting,” Mara said. “I stepped out to take a call. She waited in my office.”

“For how long?”

“Perhaps ten minutes.”

Evan glanced at the time stamp. The file had been opened at 3:42 p.m.

“Your call?”

Mara checked her calendar. “Three thirty-eight to three forty-nine.”

That placed Caroline alone in the office at exactly the wrong time. It was enough to ask questions, not enough to accuse her of taking anything.

Mara seemed to read his thought.

“I’ll speak to her.”

“After we preserve the computer,” Evan said. “And the visitor logs.”

Her face tightened. “You think I’d let her walk back in and erase something?”

“I think the file is already missing.”

Mara left to arrange for information services to secure the desktop. Priya remained.

“There’s another problem,” she said. “Caroline sent an email to the trustees fifteen minutes ago. She says the university can’t allow students’ housing to depend on your personal feud with the Whitmores.”

“She read the video, then.”

“She attached it.”

Evan opened the email. Caroline had requested an emergency call for six o’clock. The motion beneath her message would remove him from the East Hall review and return negotiations to the finance committee.

“If they pass this, she gets the missing appendix and the valuation back under her control,” Priya said.

“She already has both.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We’ll know more before six.”

They began with the appraisal firm. The lead appraiser was in Boston, and his receptionist initially offered an appointment the following week. Evan asked Priya to send the two versions of the East Hall description. Twenty minutes later, the appraiser called them himself.

“We inspected the space they made available,” he said.

“Did you enter the teaching center?” Evan asked.

“No. It was locked.”

“It operates six evenings a week.”

A pause. “That wasn’t disclosed to us.”

Evan asked who had accompanied him during the inspection.

“Someone from the university and a project consultant. I’ll check my notes.”

The name arrived by email: Graham Voss.

Next, Priya obtained the sign-in record from Mara’s suite. Caroline had entered at 3:31 and left at 3:48. There was no record of Voss entering that floor. Evan asked for the hallway camera footage, but security needed time to retrieve it.

At four, a message arrived from Tessa Brooks.

I found the survey email. Nia says she spoke to you. Should I send the whole thing?

Evan replied that she should, if she wanted to. He gave her Priya’s secure address.

The survey did more than ask whether residents would accept another room. It offered a prepaid dining card to students who completed it, then presented a list of alternatives described as “improved housing options.” It never said those alternatives had no available rooms.

At the bottom was the firm that administered the survey. Priya searched its invoices. Bellwether had paid for the work through the finance committee budget. Whitmore Development had reimbursed the university two weeks later.

“They paid for the answers they wanted,” Priya said.

“They paid for a badly worded survey. We need to establish who approved it.”

Evan forwarded the records to the university’s counsel and asked her to join the evening call. He did not want a boardroom argument over documents whose origin nobody had checked.

At five fifteen, Mara returned.

“The computer is secured,” she said. “Caroline is furious. She says she opened the file because I asked her to review the packet.”

“Did you?”

“I asked her to help locate the appendix. I didn’t ask her to remove it.”

“Did she say where it is?”

“She says she never saw a completed version.”

Evan turned his laptop toward her. “The system recorded a download.”

Mara read the line on the screen.

“She told me she only opened it.”

“Someone downloaded it to a removable drive. Information services is checking the port activity.”

Mara sat down heavily. “I should have told you she’d been in my office.”

“Yes.”

“I was trying to find out what happened before I suggested my own staff might be involved.”

“And while you waited, Caroline asked the board to take me off the review.”

Mara accepted that without defending herself.

At six, twelve trustees appeared on the video call. Caroline spoke first. She described a divided campus, reputational damage, and an incoming chair who had “lost the confidence required to lead a sensitive process.”

Evan let her finish.

Then he held up the current occupancy report.

“Before you vote,” he said, “I’d like each of you to know the proposal understates the number of East Hall residents by twenty-two.”

Daniel Price frowned at his copy. “Why?”

“That’s what I’m investigating. The appraiser also wasn’t shown the operating teaching center. And the appendix meant to document occupancy is absent from the board packet.”

Caroline’s expression did not change. “Those are administrative corrections. They don’t make you the right person to conduct the review.”

“Our counsel can oversee the records,” Evan said. “I’m asking the board to preserve them.”

Caroline leaned toward her camera. “This is precisely what I mean. An ordinary encounter with a student has become a search for misconduct.”

“An ordinary encounter?” Mara said.

Evan saw several trustees shift in their seats. Mara had not planned to speak about the courtyard.

Caroline clicked her pen. “Whatever happened outside the building, it has no bearing on a land transaction.”

“Then leave the video out of your motion,” Evan said.

For the first time, Caroline looked unsettled.

University counsel recommended postponing any decision on the East Hall negotiations until the missing records had been reviewed. Daniel agreed, reluctantly. Caroline’s motion to remove Evan failed by one vote.

It was a narrow victory. Evan could see that another day of bad headlines might change the result.

After the call, Priya came into his office with a still image from the hallway camera. Caroline left Mara’s suite carrying the same portfolio she had brought in. Nothing visible proved she had taken a document.

Two minutes later, Voss entered the elevator at the far end of the hall.

“His badge was used on the ground floor,” Priya said. “He never signed in upstairs.”

“Where did he get that elevator?”

“The service entrance. The camera follows him as far as the third floor.”

Mara’s office was on the fourth.

Priya handed Evan a second image. It showed Voss on the stairs, one hand against the railing, speaking into his phone.

Evan checked the time: 3:44.

While the East Hall file was being downloaded, Voss had been inside the building.

Then Evan’s phone buzzed with a message from Nia.

Someone taped a notice to every door in East Hall. They say we have to choose new rooms by Friday.

There were no new rooms to choose.

Evan called housing. The director answered on the fourth ring.

“Yes,” she said. “I sent the notices. I was told the board approved the relocation plan.”

“Who told you that?”

“Caroline Vale’s office.”

The board had approved nothing. But eighty-six students had just been told to leave their rooms.