Chương 5
Owen inhaled.
Not shocked.
Not angry.
Just slow.
“This is exactly why you should have counsel present before you start making accusations.”
Alexander closed his eyes.
There it was.
Not an answer.
“You’ve been my counsel for fourteen years.”
“I am counsel to several Vale entities. That is not the same thing as being your personal criminal attorney.”
“I’m not the one who needs a criminal attorney.”
Owen’s voice hardened for the first time.
“Stop.”
Alexander opened his eyes.
Owen continued.
“You have a grieving child in a hotel while cameras are outside your home. Your wife’s death has become entertainment. Do not make it worse by saying things you cannot take back.”
“Is that advice?”
“Yes.”
“Free?”
Owen ended the call.
Alexander sat still for another moment.
Then he wrote down every word he could remember.
Ortiz had told him to do that after the first threatening call.
Memory, she said, got edited every time people replayed it.
The child forensic interview took place that afternoon in a building Alexander disliked on sight because it was designed to look cheerful.
There were painted handprints on one wall, shelves of toys, soft chairs, children’s drawings.
Ethan hated it too.
“I’m not a baby.”
“I know.”
“Why are there puppets?”
“I don’t know.”
“That one’s creepy.”
Alexander looked at a smiling giraffe puppet.
“It is.”
Ethan leaned against him for one second.
Then a woman came to bring him into the interview room without Alexander.
He went.
Alexander stood in the hallway after the door closed.
Ortiz sat on a bench nearby.
“You can sit.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re pacing.”
“I pace.”
“You’re making the receptionist nervous.”
The receptionist did not look nervous.
Alexander sat.
For forty-eight minutes, he watched a vending machine.
At some point he bought coffee from it.
The coffee was terrible.
He drank all of it.
When Ethan came out, he looked tired rather than frightened.
Alexander stood.
“Can we leave?”
“Yes.”
“What did she ask?”
Ortiz stepped between the question and the answer without moving.
Alexander caught himself.
“Right. Sorry.”
Ethan shrugged.
In the parking lot he said, “Can we get fries?”
Alexander almost said no because it was three in the afternoon.
Then he remembered his new policy.
They got fries.
Ortiz met Alexander later without Ethan present.
“The interview supports what he told you,” she said.
Alexander gripped the paper cup between both hands.
“He saw a man coming from the second-floor hall near Claire’s room at approximately ten or eleven p.m. He isn’t sure of the time. He had gone downstairs for water.”
“Did he see the face?”
“No.”
“The ring?”
“Yes.”
“He said Grandpa’s?”
“He identified the crest as the one his grandfather wears. More importantly, he described a scratch along the lower gold edge before we showed him any photographs.”
Alexander stared at her.
Ortiz continued.
“He also remembered something else.”
The room seemed colder.
“What?”
“The man smelled like smoke.”
“My father doesn’t smoke.”
“Neither does Owen Bell, according to our initial information.”
Alexander almost felt relief.
Then Ortiz added, “Mr. Bell attended a private dinner that evening at a club with a cigar room.”
The relief vanished.
“How do you know?”
“We asked.”
“Harrison was there?”
“No.”
Alexander leaned back.
The investigation had begun moving.
Not quickly.
But moving.
Claire’s car was examined again.
The first specialist found nothing obvious.
A second, brought in because of the letter and threat, found evidence that a component in the braking system had been deliberately loosened in a way that could produce intermittent loss of pressure rather than immediate failure.
Ortiz refused to explain the mechanical details over the phone.
“Can you prove it happened before the crash?”
“We’re working on that.”
“Can you prove someone did it intentionally?”
“We have enough to stop calling the crash a simple accident.”
Alexander stood at the window of Mara’s guest apartment while she made coffee behind him.
Outside, traffic moved along the avenue.
People carried grocery bags. A man jogged with a dog. A woman in medical scrubs waited at the corner eating something from a paper wrapper.
The ordinary movement offended him.
Claire had been murdered.
Someone was walking a dog.
“Alex.”
He turned.
Mara held out a mug.
“I don’t want coffee.”
“You’ve had four.”
“Then why are you offering me another?”
“Habit.”
He took it anyway.
Mara sat at the kitchen table.
“We need to talk about the foundation.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“My wife was murdered.”
“And before she was murdered, she was asking about foundation records.”
He looked at her.
“I know.”
“You keep saying it like the two things are separate.”
“I don’t know that they aren’t.”
“Fair.”
She opened her laptop.
Claire had forwarded Mara three documents over the previous month.
Nothing dramatic.
Board consent forms.
Quarterly expenditure summaries.
A list of vendor payments.
Alexander recognized his own electronic signature at the bottom of several approvals.
“What am I looking at?”
“Claire asked me the same thing.”
“And?”
“I told her I’m not a forensic accountant.”
He scrolled.
The numbers were large but not unusual for the foundation.
Renovation grants.
Community development loans.
Legal consulting.
Property remediation.
“What bothered her?”
“She circled recurring payments to three consulting companies.”
Alexander looked.
Harbor Meridian.
Northpoint Administrative.
Galen Advisory.
“I’ve never heard of them.”
“You approved them.”
His jaw tightened.
“I approved budgets containing thousands of line items.”
“Exactly.”
He looked at her.
“You’re enjoying that.”
“A little.”
Claire would have laughed.
For one second, both of them seemed to realize it.
Mara looked down.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
The silence that followed was easier than sympathy.
Alexander went back to the documents.
“What did Claire find?”
“She didn’t tell me. She only asked whether a foundation director could demand the underlying engagement letters.”
“She could.”
“I told her that.”
“And?”
“Two days later she asked me how to preserve records outside a company network.”
Alexander looked up.
May you like
“Did you help her?”
“I told her to use independent counsel and not send confidential foundation material to herself until she understood her rights and obligations.”
