Chương 11
“If he had evidence, why didn’t he come forward?”
Maya rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Fear. Money. Shame. Maybe he did and wasn’t believed. Maybe he decided your mother’s death looked accidental enough to save himself.”
“Then he isn’t going to help now.”
“People change when the cost of silence changes.”
Rosalie’s mouth tightened. “That sounds like something lawyers tell clients when they have no witness.”
“It is.”
They reached Adrian the next morning.
He answered because Rosalie called from a number with an Oregon area code arranged through Maya’s office. When he heard her name, he remained silent so long she thought the call had dropped.
Then he said, “You sound like her.”
Rosalie closed her eyes.
The conversation lasted eleven minutes. Adrian denied possessing records. He said Lorelei had been frightened and unreliable near the end of her life. He remembered no financial misconduct. He had no interest in becoming involved.
Before hanging up, he asked whether the key had been found.
Rosalie did not answer.
Adrian whispered, “Then he knows.”
The line went dead.
Maya sent an investigator to Oregon. Emmett’s lawyers sent Adrian a letter first, warning that disclosure of confidential Durham financial information could expose him to civil liability and prosecution.
Adrian forwarded the letter to Rosalie.
It was the first useful thing he did.
The state financial-crimes unit obtained subpoenas for bank records tied to the shell companies. That process would take weeks. Emmett used the delay. His representatives described the deposits as legitimate medical and consulting expenses. His public statement expressed compassion for Rosalie while accusing unnamed advisers of exploiting her trauma.
Dr. Voss voluntarily surrendered the syringe case to police after removing the medication. His attorney provided inventory logs showing the drugs had been returned to St. Vincent’s pharmacy.
The pharmacy logs were signed by a nurse who had not worked that weekend.
When investigators questioned her, she admitted Voss had asked her to enter the return retroactively. She believed it was an administrative correction. She had not seen the medication.
Voss resigned from the hospital three hours before the board suspended his privileges.
He still did not confess.
Rosalie moved into a short-term apartment leased by Maya’s firm. Manuel took the unit across the hall. They did not share a bed. They did not pretend the wedding had created intimacy that months of negotiation had prevented.
Their marriage existed in documents, news stories, and the way reporters shouted questions when they left court.
In private, they learned smaller things.
Rosalie hated cinnamon toothpaste. Manuel fell asleep with sports radio playing quietly. She read mystery novels from the last page backward when anxiety made uncertainty unbearable. He repaired loose cabinet hinges without being asked, then left the tools on the kitchen counter for days.
She drank coffee only after it cooled nearly to room temperature. He reheated his three times and forgot it in the microwave.
One evening, Rosalie found him sitting on the hallway floor outside his apartment with payroll spreadsheets open on his laptop.
“Locked out?” she asked.
“My mother changed the office access codes.”
“Why?”
“I asked the board to remove her as chief executive.”
Rosalie lowered herself against the opposite wall. “That seems dramatic.”
“It was a dramatic meeting.”
“Did they remove her?”
“No. They removed me from daily operations pending review.”
She considered this. “You’re bad at coups.”
“First one.”
“What happens now?”
“Elena keeps the company running. I remain an owner and guarantor. The board thinks separating me from operations may convince lenders the company isn’t controlled by a man committing romantic financial suicide.”
Rosalie looked at the spreadsheets. “Are you?”
“Romantic?”
“Committing financial suicide.”
“Possibly the financial part.”
She folded her arms around her knees. “You can annul the marriage.”
“So can you.”
“My father would use it as proof that you manipulated me temporarily.”
“He’ll use staying married as proof too.”
“Yes.”
Manuel closed the laptop. “What do you want?”
“I want one decision that is not made because of what he might say.”
“Then make one.”
She looked irritated. “You say that as though wanting is the same as knowing.”
He leaned his head against the wall. “I don’t know whether I want to be married to you. I know I don’t want Emmett deciding whether I am.”
Rosalie stared at him.
It was not romantic. That may have been why she trusted it.
“I don’t know either,” she said.
They remained on the floor until the motion-sensor lights went dark. Neither moved to reactivate them.
Two weeks after the wedding, Adrian Vale agreed to meet Rosalie.
He refused to travel, so she, Maya, and a state investigator flew to Oregon. Manuel stayed because Nelson Development was entering emergency mediation with its lenders.
Adrian lived in a manufactured home outside Salem with an overgrown yard and three bird feeders. He was thinner than his licensing photograph, with tremors in both hands and an oxygen tube looped beneath his nose.
He did not invite the investigator inside.
“I’ll speak to Rosalie,” he said. “Not the state.”
Maya refused to let Rosalie enter alone.
Adrian almost closed the door. Then he looked at Rosalie’s birthmark and began crying.
Lorelei had the same dark coloration along her shoulder, though hers was usually hidden beneath clothing.
“I should have come,” he said.
Rosalie did not comfort him. “Why didn’t you?”
“Your father showed me the clinic reports. They said she was delusional, drinking, obsessed with money that wasn’t missing. After she died, he said he would prove I helped her steal from the trust.”
“Did you?”
“I moved funds into a protected account at her instruction. Legally. She wanted enough money to leave.”
“Where did it go?”
“Emmett recovered it through probate.”
May you like
Adrian allowed them inside.
The home smelled of dust, menthol ointment, and burnt toast. Boxes filled the dining area. He had kept no complete duplicate ledger, but he had retained copies of three letters Lorelei sent him and one audiocassette she mailed the week before her death.
