I considered her words, knowing this was a conundrum I had faced often in my years with the J.O.S.H.U.A. organization. Many times I had found an agency or organization that was doing some wonderful things, yet at its core there were serious issues of ethics or improper use of funds. My experience had been that when problems like these existed, the trouble was most often found at the very top with enormous amounts of money going into the pockets of the principals. Just recently I had analyzed a nonprofit that was accomplishing some wonderful things—only to find that the man running the business seemed to have forgotten the “non” in “nonprofit” as he personally received more than a half a million dollars per year in salary and fringe benefits. Then, as always, I had asked myself the same question: Blow the whistle and risk destroying all the good they were accomplishing, or let it ride? Apparently, Wendell had decided to basically fix things and then let it ride.

“This leaves us with one question, Gwen. Who was it? Who was stealing the money?”

Gwen shook her head, her eyes moist.

“I have my suspicions, but Wendell would never say. He told me only that he was dealing with the matter, and when all was said and done, those involved would be out of the organization.”

“So whom did you suspect?”

“Alan. And…” she hesitated.

“Judith?” I asked.

After a moment, she nodded.

“Not until yesterday did I suspect Judith,” she said. “But then at the funeral it began to dawn on me. She was the only one who had the authority to make the kinds of financial transfers that Wendell had discovered going from Feed the Need into Smythe Incorporated. Only Judith or Derek could’ve done that. And I know Derek wouldn’t rob his own company.”

“So tell me about Wendell’s last day.”

“What can I say? He called me Sunday night and told me about his operation. He also told me he had found an outside source for some fast cash and that he had one day to make everything right. I spent Monday morning rescheduling all of his appointments. He spent the morning trying to redo all that had been undone in Feed the Need.”

“But he was a wealthy man,” I said. “Why involve my foundation at all? Why didn’t he just put up his own personal cash? To someone like him, a quarter of a million dollars couldn’t have been all that much.”

“Well, he didn’t keep that kind of money just lying around, if that’s what you mean,” Gwen snapped. “His personal fortune was tied up in his portfolio.”

“What about getting a line of credit from the bank?”