Chương 8
Daniel’s face changed.
I continued before either of them could speak.
“I told him no.”
Ruiz stepped closer.
“Exact words.”
“He said, ‘Daniel was old-fashioned about records, wasn’t he?’”
“And you?”
“I said he stored everything electronically now.”
“Anything else?”
“He looked relieved.”
Daniel whispered something under his breath.
“What?”
I asked.
He looked at me.
“My father used Beckett for something before he died.”
Ruiz said, “What?”
Daniel swallowed.
“I never knew the details.”
I waited.
“He made me promise that if anything happened to him, I would never let Beckett control the company records.”
No one spoke.
Daniel looked almost ashamed.
“I thought he meant legal strategy.”
I stared at him.
“Your father gave you a warning about the family attorney, and you ignored it for fifteen years.”
“I was twenty-six.”
“You’re forty-one now.”
“I know.”
Ruiz reached for her phone.
Before she could dial, someone knocked hard on the basement door.
All three of us turned.
An officer opened it from the other side.
His breathing was quick.
“Detective, Beckett’s gone.”
Ruiz’s face hardened.
“Gone where?”
“He left during the arrests.”
“Find him.”
“We’re trying.”
The officer looked at me.
“There’s something else.”
My stomach tightened.
He held up a clear evidence bag containing an envelope.
My name was written across the front in Daniel’s handwriting.
Daniel stared at it.
“I didn’t write that.”
The officer handed the bag to Ruiz.
She turned it over.
The envelope had been sealed.
On the back, beneath the flap, someone had written three more words.
ASK YOUR HUSBAND.
Ruiz did not open the envelope.
She held it by the edges through the evidence bag and looked at Daniel.
“Do you recognize the handwriting?”
Daniel stepped closer without touching it.
“It looks like mine.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“No.”
His answer came too quickly.
I heard it.
Ruiz heard it too.
She lowered the bag.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
Daniel’s mouth tightened.
Nothing moved in the room except the fluorescent light above us, which flickered once and settled.
I stared at him.
“Daniel.”
He sat down.
That frightened me more than if he had started explaining.
Ruiz remained standing.
The officer at the door glanced between us and quietly stepped back into the hallway.
Daniel rubbed both hands over his face.
“There was another set of records.”
I felt something inside me go very still.
“What records?”
“My father’s.”
Ruiz pulled out the chair across from him.
“What kind?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
I laughed once.
He looked at me.
“Don’t.”
“You have reached the point where every answer begins with ‘I don’t know exactly.’”
“I’m trying to tell you.”
“Then tell me.”
He nodded.
“My father kept handwritten ledgers.”
“Financial?”
“Partly.”
“Partly what?”
“Names, dates, meetings, payments.”
Ruiz leaned forward.
“Payments by whom?”
“I never saw enough to know.”
I stared at him.
“You just said he warned you about Beckett.”
“Yes.”
“And now there are secret ledgers.”
“Yes.”
“How long have you known?”
Daniel looked at the table.
“Since before we were married.”
I stood so fast the chair legs scraped the floor.
For one second nobody spoke.
Then Ruiz said quietly, “Claire.”
I held up a hand.
“I’m not leaving.”
“I wasn’t going to ask you to.”
“Good.”
Daniel looked miserable.
I had no sympathy available.
“You have spent the entire day explaining that you lied to protect me from information you learned recently.”
He said nothing.
“This was not recent.”
“No.”
“This was fifteen years.”
“Yes.”
“And you married me knowing there was something hidden in your family’s finances.”
“It wasn’t that simple.”
“Of course it wasn’t.”
His jaw tightened.
“My father was dying.”
“So?”
“He was barely coherent some days.”
“So you decided his warning did not matter?”
“I decided I didn’t know what it meant.”
“Yet you kept it from me.”
“I was ashamed.”
That stopped me.
Not because it excused anything.
Because it was the first answer that did not sound strategic.
Ruiz watched him.
“Ashamed of what?”
Daniel looked toward the refrigerator.
One of the children’s drawings had begun peeling loose at the corner.
He stared at it like it might answer for him.
“My father wasn’t the man everyone thinks he was.”
I sat down again.
Daniel continued.
“When I was twenty-six, he called me to his study.”
His voice had changed.
The sarcasm was gone.
“He had pancreatic cancer.”
I knew that part.
Frank Vale had died eight months before I met Daniel.
There were photographs of him all over Margaret’s house.
Frank shaking hands with senators.
Frank cutting ribbons at hospitals.
Frank standing beside Daniel at his college graduation.
Margaret spoke about him as if sainthood had simply been delayed by paperwork.
“He gave me a key,” Daniel said.
“To what?”
“A safe-deposit box.”
Ruiz asked, “Which bank?”
“First Fairfield Trust.”
“Still open?”
“The branch was absorbed by another bank years ago.”
“What happened to the box?”
“I emptied it after he died.”
My throat tightened.
“What was inside?”
“Three notebooks.”
Ruiz’s pen stopped.
“And?”
“Cash.”
“How much?”
“About two hundred thousand.”
I stared at him.
“Cash.”
“Yes.”
“Your dying father handed you a secret key to two hundred thousand dollars and notebooks full of payments.”
“Yes.”
“And you never thought this might be worth mentioning to your forensic-accountant wife.”
His face hardened.
“We weren’t married.”
“We became married.”
“I know.”
“Did the truth expire?”
“No.”
Ruiz cut in before I could continue.
“What did the notebooks say?”
Daniel swallowed.
“Some entries were company expenses.”
“Legitimate?”
“Some.”
“And the others?”
“Payments to consultants, attorneys, local officials, physicians, research contractors.”
Ruiz looked up.
“Officials?”
“I couldn’t prove what they were for.”
“Were names listed?”
“Initials mostly.”
“Beckett?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Yes.”
The room seemed smaller again.
“How often?” Ruiz asked.
“Dozens of times.”
“Amounts?”
“Anywhere from five thousand to fifty.”
“Dates?”
“Over about eight years.”
I leaned forward.
“Before Vale Biotech went public?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
May you like
“There were entries after the IPO.”
I tried to picture Frank Vale writing those numbers by hand while the company grew around him.
