Chương 2
“You want to come in here?”
The dispatcher told me to remain somewhere safe.
“Yes,” I told Mr. Feldman.
His apartment smelled faintly of onions and furniture polish.
He locked the door after me and seemed uncertain what to do next.
“You want water?”
It was such an ordinary question that I nearly laughed.
“Sure.”
He returned from the kitchen with a Cubs mug filled to the rim.
My hand shook when I took it.
That annoyed me.
I had been calm while Chase blocked the door.
I had been calm when he raised his fist.
Now I was trembling in an elderly neighbor’s living room while a television game show flashed silently across the wall.
Mr. Feldman pretended not to notice.
“You lost a shoe,” he said.
I looked down.
“I did.”
“Probably not the biggest issue.”
“No.”
He nodded toward my phone.
“Police coming?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I cancelled my bank card through the banking app while we waited.
My thumb missed the button twice.
Then I froze the account access connected to the card and changed the password.
The forensic accountant in me had finally arrived, several minutes behind the frightened woman.
Once she did, she brought questions.
Why forty-five thousand dollars?
Why tonight?
Why did Diane believe she could take my card?
Why had Chase been so certain I would cooperate?
I opened the banking app again and checked recent transactions.
Nothing obvious appeared.
Then I checked the joint wedding account.
The balance made me sit down.
Three months earlier, Chase and I had opened that account for shared wedding expenses.
I had deposited twenty thousand dollars.
He had promised to deposit the same amount after his next closing.
The balance should have been close to twenty thousand because almost nothing had been paid from it.
It was $1,842.17.
I stared at the number until Mr. Feldman asked if I needed him to call somebody.
“No.”
My voice sounded far away.
I opened the transaction history.
There were withdrawals I did not recognize.
Two thousand.
Thirty-five hundred.
Four thousand.
Most had been transferred electronically to an account identified only by the last four digits.
The transfers had started eleven weeks earlier.
Small enough at first that I had missed them among wedding expenses.
Then larger.
My professional embarrassment arrived before grief.
I investigated fraud for a living.
I lectured clients about internal controls, shared access, and the danger of trusting familiarity more than documentation.
Meanwhile, I had barely reviewed an account because it was labeled wedding.
The last transfer had been made four days earlier.
Five thousand dollars.
I took screenshots.
Then I downloaded the statements.
By the time someone knocked on Mr. Feldman’s door, my shaking had stopped.
Two police officers stood in the hallway.
One spoke with me while the other went to my condo.
I described what had happened without embellishment.
That was harder than it sounds when the person you are describing is the man whose toothbrush is beside yours.
“Did he strike you?”
“No.”
“Did he attempt to?”
“He raised a closed fist after blocking my exit.”
“And you kicked him?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Upper thigh.”
“Before or after he raised his fist?”
“After.”
The officer wrote it down.
“Any injuries?”
“Not that I know of.”
From my condo came Diane’s voice, sharp enough to carry through two closed doors.
“She could have killed him.”
Mr. Feldman snorted.
The officer glanced at him.
“Sorry,” he said.
A few minutes later, the second officer returned.
Chase and Diane had agreed to leave.
That phrase irritated me more than it should have.
Agreed to leave.
As though their departure were a courtesy.
I stood in the hallway while they came out.
Chase limped slightly.
Diane carried her handbag.
My bank card was gone.
“Where is my card?”
Diane stared straight ahead.
The officer beside her said, “Ma’am?”
“I gave it back.”
“No, you didn’t,” I said.
“It’s probably in the kitchen.”
Chase looked exhausted now rather than angry.
“Jesus, Whitney, enough.”
I looked at the officer.
“She physically took the card from my counter and refused to return it.”
Diane opened her handbag with a violent jerk.
She pulled out my card.
For a second, nobody said anything.
Even Chase looked at her.
“I forgot I put it there.”
I held out my hand.
She gave the card to the officer instead of me.
He examined it, then returned it.
I slipped it into my pocket although it was already useless.
Diane pointed at me.
“You have made the biggest mistake of your life.”
“Mom,” Chase muttered.
“No, she needs to hear this.”
The officer stepped between us.
“That’s enough.”
Diane’s mouth closed.
Chase looked at me from behind the officer.
Six weeks before our wedding, his expression should have broken my heart.
Instead, I kept seeing the joint account balance.
$1,842.17.
He rubbed his injured leg.
“Can I at least get some clothes?”
“Not tonight,” I said.
His eyes narrowed.
“That’s my home too.”
“No,” I said.
“It was where you lived.”
He stared at me for a long moment.
Then he smiled.
It was small and ugly.
“You have no idea what you just started.”
The elevator doors closed on him before I could answer.
I returned to my condo with the officers and locked the door.
The reserve wine was still sitting on the island.
Diane’s ivory folder lay beside it.
I almost threw the folder away.
Instead, I opened it.
There were catering proposals inside, floral estimates, and a payment instruction sheet.
The vendor name at the top meant nothing to me.
The bank routing information did.
I had seen the last four digits before.
They matched the account that had been receiving money from our wedding fund.
I sat down slowly.
The forty-five thousand dollars had never been intended for flowers.
May you like
And whatever Chase and his mother had planned, it had begun long before they raised a fist over my PIN.
I left the folder open on the island and stared at the routing number until the numbers stopped looking like numbers.
