She found the missing money, and then her boss said she took it
The detective laid the bank printouts on the table one at a time, like playing cards.
“Every one of these transfers was made with your login, Mrs. Prochaska.”
Nadine Prochaska looked at the numbers. She’d seen them before. She was the one who had found them.
She was fifty-nine and had kept the books at Pelletier Building Supply in Bangor, Maine, for twenty-three years. She’d been at Gary Pelletier’s daughter’s baptism. She’d brought casseroles when his father died.
Three weeks ago, while reconciling accounts late on a Friday, she’d noticed payments to a vendor called Northfield Supply. Small amounts. Month after month. Year after year. Nearly three hundred eighty thousand dollars in all.
Northfield Supply had no phone number. Its mailing address was a post office box in Brewer.
Gary had set up that vendor himself.
Nadine had prayed about it all weekend. On Monday, she’d made copies of everything and requested a meeting with Gary’s brother, Paul, the company’s co-owner.
The meeting was scheduled for Thursday.
On Wednesday, Gary called the police.
Now she sat in the conference room with Paul staring at the floor, Gary standing by the window with his arms folded, and a detective named Sheila Burke waiting for an explanation.
“I didn’t do this,” Nadine said. “I was trying to report it.”
Gary shook his head slowly, as if he pitied her. “Nadine, I trusted you.”
Her hands were cold. She thought about her husband, Walt, and their mortgage, and the twenty-three years she’d spent making sure every penny in this building was accounted for.
She thought about the manila folder of copies, still on the passenger seat of her car.
Then she looked closer at the printouts, at the small time stamps in the corner of each transfer.
7:10 p.m. 7:25 p.m. 7:15 p.m.
She checked the dates.
Every one of them had been made on a Wednesday night.
The Folder on the Passenger Seat
“Where were you last Wednesday at 7:10?” Detective Burke asked.
Nadine looked at Gary.
He had turned from the window. His arms were still folded, but one thumb had slipped under the opposite elbow and was rubbing back and forth.
“I was at St. Matthew’s.”
“Church?”
“The Wednesday supper. I help serve.”
Paul lifted his head. “She does.”
Gary said, “That doesn’t prove anything. She could’ve made the transfers earlier.”
“They were made at those times,” Nadine said.
“I heard her,” Gary replied. “But the software records activity when it posts. Not always when somebody types.”
Detective Burke glanced down at the printout. “That’s not what your bank told me.”
Gary stopped rubbing his arm.
Burke gathered the pages and squared them with the edge of the table. She was a broad-shouldered woman in her forties, with a gray streak in her dark hair and a coffee stain on one cuff.
“Mrs. Prochaska, get the folder from your car.”
Gary moved away from the window. “We’re not done here.”
“We’re done for now,” Burke said.
Nadine stood too quickly and caught the chair with the back of her knee. The metal legs scraped the floor. Paul flinched at the sound.
Outside, the parking lot was wet from a late afternoon rain. Pelletier Building Supply sat behind a chain-link fence, its stacks of plywood covered with blue tarps. A forklift beeped somewhere near the loading bay.
Her Buick was parked beside the employee entrance.
The folder lay on the passenger seat under a grocery receipt and a blue wool scarf. Nadine picked it up. The brass fastener had come loose, and several pages had slid sideways.
She brought it into the conference room.
Burke opened the folder.
There were copies of the vendor setup form, six invoices, two bank statements, and a list Nadine had written in her small square handwriting. At the top she had written:
Northfield Supply: first payment 03/14/2018. Last payment 02/28/2024. Total: $379,462.18.
She had underlined the total twice.
Burke studied the vendor form. Gary’s name was at the bottom under approved by. His signature was a hard, sloping mark that looked nothing like Nadine’s.
“When did you make these copies?” Burke asked.
“Monday morning. Before Gary came in.”
“Who knew you had them?”
“Gary knew I wanted to meet with Paul. I didn’t tell him why.”
Gary gave a short laugh. “She told half the office.”
“I told Karen I needed Paul in the meeting.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Paul kept staring at his hands. His wedding ring was loose. He turned it around once, then again.
Burke tapped one of the invoices. “This invoice says Northfield delivered forty sheets of half-inch plywood.”
“We didn’t receive forty sheets.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I enter the receiving tickets. We had twelve delivered that week, and they came from Hammond Lumber. The price on this invoice is wrong too. It says two hundred fourteen dollars a sheet.”
Gary said, “Errors happen.”
“Not for six years.”
Nobody said anything.
The heating system clicked inside the wall. Somewhere out front, a customer pushed through the glass doors and shook rain off a jacket.
Burke asked Gary for the password to the accounting program.
Gary’s face changed then. Not much. The corner of his mouth pulled down.
“Why?”
“So I can see who logged in.”
“Nadine is the bookkeeper.”
“I asked for the password.”
“We don’t give police passwords.”
“Then I’ll get a warrant.”
Gary looked at Paul. “You called her, didn’t you?”
Paul said, “I called her because you told me she stole from us.”
“You saw the numbers.”
“I saw what you sent me.”
That landed differently.
Nadine turned toward Paul. “What did he send you?”
Paul’s chair gave a small squeak when he shifted.
“An email,” he said.
“About me?”
Gary said, “This isn’t helping.”
“What’s in the email?” Burke asked.
Paul reached into his jacket and took out his phone. He unlocked it with his thumb. The screen showed a message from Gary sent at 8:42 Wednesday morning.
Need to talk before she talks to you. I found a serious problem with Nadine’s access. Come to the office Thursday. Don’t mention this to her.
Below it was a photograph of one of the bank pages.
Nadine read it twice.
Gary had not said anything about Northfield when she asked for the meeting. He had gone straight to the police.
The Nights Nadine Wasn’t There
The first Wednesday payment was dated March 14, 2018.
Nadine remembered that night because the furnace at her house had quit.
She and Walt had spent the evening in the living room wearing coats while a repairman named Bruce tried to find a replacement part. Nadine had phoned the office at 6:37 p.m. to tell Gary she wouldn’t be able to finish the monthly reconciliation until Thursday.
She knew this because the call was still in her phone history.
The next payment fell on April 11.
That was the night Walt had driven their granddaughter, Becca, to the emergency room after she cut her palm on a broken mason jar. Nadine had been there until nearly midnight, sitting beside a vending machine while Becca got six stitches.
May 9 was the night of the town budget meeting.
June 13, a Wednesday, had been Walt’s fifty-ninth birthday. Nadine had made pot roast. She’d left the office at 4:45, carrying a lemon pie in a plastic cake carrier.
She pulled up each date on her phone.
Not every Wednesday had a story attached to it. Some had only the office time clock. Some she remembered because of weather, a funeral, a pharmacy receipt.
On every listed date, she was gone by 5 p.m.
The time clock showed it.
So did the church sign-in sheet for the last two years.
On the older dates, the trail was messier. Paper calendars. Credit card charges. Walt’s old employer had kept vehicle logs. Nadine had not expected her life to become evidence, but there it was: a dry cleaner receipt from 7:31 p.m., a gas purchase in Old Town, a photograph from Becca’s school concert.
Burke sat at Nadine’s kitchen table on Friday morning while Walt made toast.
Their house was a narrow split-level on Fern Street. The kitchen cabinets had been painted yellow in 1998 and never painted again. A wooden rooster hung beside the refrigerator because Nadine’s sister had given it to her, not because she liked roosters.
Burke took notes.
Walt put a plate beside her. “You want coffee?”
“Please.”
He poured it too close to the rim. Coffee spilled onto the counter.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
He wiped it with the heel of his hand and looked at Nadine. “They really think you stole it?”
“Gary does.”
“Does Paul?”
Nadine had no answer ready.
Paul had sat across from her for twenty-three years. He’d brought his shirts to the same dry cleaner. He knew she kept peppermints in the second drawer. He’d once driven forty-five minutes in a snowstorm to pick up her when her car died.
He also had not looked at her once during the police interview.
Burke asked, “Does Pelletier Building Supply have remote access?”
“Not officially,” Nadine said.
“Not officially?”
“Gary liked to work from home. Sometimes from his camp. The accounting software was on the office computer, but he installed a remote program after the pandemic.”
“What program?”
“QuickAssist, I think. Something like that.”
“Who set it up?”
“Gary’s nephew. Todd.”
Walt stopped beside the sink.
“Todd hasn’t worked there since 2021,” he said.
Nadine looked at him.
“He quit after the argument with Gary,” Walt said. “The one about the payroll.”
“What argument?”
Walt shook his head. “I don’t know. Todd was mad. Gary said he was lazy.”
Burke wrote down Todd’s name.
At noon, she called back.
The office computer had been taken to the county lab. The bank had confirmed that the transfers were not ordinary weekly payments. They had been entered one by one, then approved using Nadine’s credentials.
And the access log showed another computer.
Gary’s home laptop.
What Northfield Actually Bought
The bank records did not end at Northfield Supply.
Three days later, Burke brought Nadine to a small office at the police station. There was a gray filing cabinet, two chairs, and a printer with a blinking red light.
She placed another stack of pages on the desk.
“Northfield received the money,” Burke said. “Then the money moved.”
Nadine read the first page.
A transfer for $4,800 went from Northfield’s account to a company called Eastport Equipment Leasing.
Another for $6,200 went to Penobscot Auto Finance.
A third went to a credit card account under the name Gary Pelletier.
Nadine’s eyes stopped on the last line.
“Is this his personal card?”
“It is.”
“Why would he do that?”
Burke didn’t answer.
The next page showed payments to a casino in Connecticut. Not large ones. Seven hundred dollars. Twelve hundred. Four hundred and fifty. One charge for $3,918.77.
Walt had told her Gary liked to gamble.
Everybody knew that, in the way people know things about a boss. Gary went to Foxwoods twice a year. He kept a deck of cards in the desk drawer. He’d once won enough to buy a used boat, then lost it the following winter.
Nadine had never imagined the money came from Pelletier Building Supply.
Burke said, “Gary’s credit card was maxed out in 2021. His house has a second mortgage. He also owes the IRS.”
Nadine looked at the transfers again.
“Why frame me?”
“Because you found it.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“It might be.”
“No.” She pushed the pages away. “He could’ve fired me. He could’ve said the accounts were wrong. Why call the police?”
Burke leaned back.
“Because you scheduled a meeting with Paul.”
Nadine remembered Paul’s face in the conference room. His hand turning the wedding ring.
“Paul knew?”
“Paul knew the business was short on cash. He didn’t know why. Gary sent him the email about you before he had seen the full file.”
“So Gary wanted him to blame me first.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
Nadine hated how reasonable it sounded.
On Monday, Paul came to her house.
Walt answered the door. Paul held a bakery box with a clear plastic lid. Inside were six blueberry muffins, all too large and shiny with sugar.
Nadine met him in the front hall.
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
Rain ticked against the porch roof. Paul looked older than he had in the conference room. His hair had gone white at the sides, and the skin beneath his eyes had the gray color of someone who had been sleeping badly.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
Nadine held the door.
“About the transfers,” he added. “I knew the company was bleeding money. Gary said it was the lumber market. Then fuel. Then the new inventory system.”
“You signed checks.”
“I signed what he put in front of me.”
“You’re a co-owner.”
“I know what I am.”
The box of muffins sagged slightly in his hand. One had tipped against the cardboard divider.
Paul said, “He told me you had started taking money in 2022.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I believed the documents.”
“You didn’t ask me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He rubbed the side of his neck. “Because I was ashamed.”
That was not the answer she expected.
Paul told her he had found a stack of overdue notices in Gary’s desk in January. Gary said Nadine had hidden them from him. Then Gary showed him two transfers marked as refunds, both made with Nadine’s login.
Paul had wanted to confront her, but Gary said she would destroy the records if she knew.
“Then why did you agree to meet me?” Nadine asked.
Paul stared at the welcome mat.
“Because I found something else.”
“What?”
He put the bakery box down on the porch rail and pulled a folded envelope from his coat.
The envelope had been opened and taped shut.
Inside was a photocopy of a contract from 2018. The business had rented a small warehouse in Brewer from a company called Northfield Properties LLC.
The owner of Northfield Properties was listed as G. Pelletier Holdings.
Gary had not only created the vendor. He owned the building where the vendor supposedly stored supplies.
Nadine read the contract with both hands.
Paul said, “The warehouse has been empty since 2019.”
“Then why were we paying Northfield Supply?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked up.
Paul’s mouth worked once before any sound came out.
“I think Gary used the company to pay himself. I think he needed the money for the gambling. But there’s more.”
He took another paper from the envelope.
It was a bank notice dated February 27, 2024.
Account restricted pending review of suspected elder financial exploitation.
Nadine read the name under the notice.
Paul Pelletier.
The Part Gary Left Out
Paul had a mother.
Her name was Evelyn Pelletier, and she was eighty-six years old. She lived in a care center in Bangor, three miles from the lumberyard. Her memory had been slipping for four years.
Paul was her legal guardian.
Gary was not.
According to Paul, Gary had convinced Evelyn to sign a new power of attorney in October 2022. He told her Paul was taking money from her account. Then he moved $92,000 into a new account controlled by G. Pelletier Holdings.
Paul had challenged the transfer.
The bank froze his personal accounts while investigators looked into it.
“Gary used Northfield for that too?” Nadine asked.
“Some of it.”
“Some?”
Paul unfolded the last sheet.
It was a handwritten note, photographed from the inside of a desk drawer.
The handwriting was Gary’s. Nadine recognized the narrow capital letters. He wrote invoices the same way.
Keep Evelyn’s money separate until Paul backs off. Use Northfield for transfers. N. can enter the invoices. If she asks, tell her it’s warehouse stock.
Nadine stared at the first sentence.
Then the second.
“Who is N.?” she asked.
Paul didn’t answer.
The room at the police station had no window. A pipe knocked somewhere behind the wall.
Burke had found the note in Gary’s home office that morning. Gary had torn it in half and thrown it into a wastebasket under old newspapers. His wife had called the police after he started yelling when they searched the house.
Nadine read the note again.
“Gary wrote that I could enter the invoices.”
“That doesn’t mean you did,” Burke said.
“I know what it means.”
Paul’s face had gone red. “He used your initials.”
“Why?”
“To make it look like you were involved.”
Nadine pressed the note flat against the desk.
There was a date on the back.
October 4, 2022.
That was the week Gary had asked her to stay late and update all the vendor files. She remembered sitting alone under the fluorescent lights, opening old folders while rain tapped the loading-bay doors.
He had brought her a sandwich from Subway.
She had been grateful.
Wednesday at 7:10
The county lab found the remote-access program on Gary’s home laptop.
It had been set to connect to the office computer every Wednesday at 7 p.m. The connection lasted between four and nine minutes. Gary’s laptop had saved the password for Nadine’s account.
He had not guessed it.
He had watched her type it.
The password was the name of her first dog followed by Walt’s birth year. She had used it since 2016.
Burke showed Nadine the access report in the police station hallway.
“Did anybody else know that password?”
“Gary.”
“Anyone else?”
“Maybe Todd. He set up the remote program.”
Todd came in voluntarily on Thursday.
He was thirty-two, heavy around the middle, with a yellow raincoat and a beard that ended sharply beneath his jaw. He worked at a tire shop in Brewer now.
Todd had installed the remote software, but he said he didn’t know what Gary planned to do with it.
“I thought he wanted to check inventory from home,” Todd told Burke.
“Why did you leave?”
Todd looked toward the interview-room door.
“Because he asked me to make Nadine’s computer invisible on the network.”
Nadine was standing outside the room when she heard that.
Todd rubbed both hands over his face.
“He said she was looking at files she shouldn’t. I told him that was a bad idea. He said I was fired if I didn’t do it.”
“Did you do it?”
“For one day.”
“Which day?”
“October 5, 2022.”
The day after Gary wrote the note.
Todd had kept screenshots. Not because he was careful. Because his phone automatically saved them to a folder when he took pictures for tech support.
One screenshot showed a file named Northfield_2022.
Another showed Gary’s home laptop connected to the office computer.
The last showed the accounting program open under Nadine’s name.
In the corner of the screen, the clock read 7:10 p.m.
Gary had accused Nadine in a conference room with printouts he believed would be enough. He had not counted on the time stamps, the remote program, or a nephew who kept screenshots because he was too lazy to delete them.
Still, the case did not end there.
The money from Evelyn’s account was gone.
The Last Envelope
Gary was charged with theft, forgery, computer fraud, and exploitation of an elderly person.
Paul was not charged. He resigned from Pelletier Building Supply two weeks later and sold his share to a contractor from Presque Isle.
The business closed in November.
Nadine stayed until the final Friday because somebody had to reconcile the last payroll. She worked in a half-empty office while men carried shelving out through the front doors. The old coffee machine went first. Then the framed photograph of Gary’s father beside the loading dock.
On her last day, Burke stopped by with one more envelope.
It was from the bank.
Nadine opened it at her desk.
Inside was a typed statement from Evelyn Pelletier.
She had dictated it to a social worker after hearing that Gary had blamed Nadine.
The statement said:
I gave Gary permission to use the account. He told me Paul was stealing from me. I was frightened, and I believed him. Paul never stole anything. Gary knew that.
Underneath was a second page.
Nadine Prochaska warned me once that Gary was asking too many questions about my house. I told her not to interfere. She was right.
Nadine sat back.
She had no memory of saying that.
Then she did.
It had been in the hallway at Evelyn’s eightieth birthday party, while Gary stood in the kitchen pretending not to listen. Nadine had noticed him going through a stack of envelopes near the telephone. She’d told Evelyn to be careful.
Evelyn had waved her away.
Five years later, she had remembered.
Nadine folded the statement and put it back in the envelope.
Outside, the empty yard held puddles the color of old pennies. The building’s sign had already been taken down, leaving four pale squares on the brick.
Her Buick was parked by the fence.
She walked toward it, then stopped.
The office door behind her opened with a long metal squeal. Paul came out carrying the rooster from the kitchen.
“I found this in the break room,” he said.
Nadine looked at the wooden bird.
“I don’t want it.”
“I know.”
He held it out anyway.
She took it because refusing would have required a conversation.
On the drive home, the rooster sat on the passenger seat with its painted red comb tilted toward the window.
At the next light, Nadine glanced at it.
Then she saw the folder beneath its feet, the one she had carried back from the office.
The last page was still there.
The note in Gary’s handwriting.
N. can enter the invoices.
Nadine reached over and turned the page facedown.
The light changed.
She drove.
If this story stayed with you, pass it along quietly.
For more stories of people caught in the crosshairs at work, follow the green lunch card with Tomás Herrera’s name on it and the manager who fired her at her husband’s grave. And for a very different kind of showdown, see the mason who stopped a six-ton lift with one hand.
