Chương 2
Vanessa’s head snapped toward him.
That was the first thing all evening Claire had seen genuinely surprise her.
Richard watched Vanessa carefully.
Ruiz said, “Grayson Genomics is not the laboratory named on the reports Mrs. Bennett sent me.”
“No. They performed independent verification.”
“On what?”
Richard hesitated.
Claire felt the room tighten around that hesitation.
“Mr. Cole.”
“Retained specimens.”
Vanessa said, “What retained specimens?”
Richard did not answer her.
Claire lowered the phone slightly.
“What specimens?”
Richard looked older than he had at Andrew’s funeral.
“The blood samples from both prenatal paternity tests.”
Vanessa laughed once.
It was the wrong laugh. Too quick, with no humor in it.
“You can’t just take medical samples and send them somewhere.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then who did?”
“The laboratory did, after receiving preservation notices.”
“From you?”
“From outside counsel.”
“Which outside counsel?”
“Mine.”
Vanessa’s face changed again.
“You hired a lawyer?”
Richard’s jaw flexed.
“I am a lawyer.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
For ten years Richard had served simultaneously as estate manager, family counsel, trust secretary, occasional referee, and the person Andrew called when his mother locked herself out of the wine cellar. Claire had watched him handle funerals, shareholder disputes, Vanessa’s divorce, a dockworker injury, and one Christmas dinner in which Andrew threw a carving fork hard enough to stick it into a pantry door.
Richard Cole did not hire counsel for himself because he was being cautious.
He hired counsel when he believed he might need to be defended.
Claire said, “Open the case.”
Richard looked at the phone.
Ruiz said, “Don’t.”
Claire’s eyes stayed on Richard.
“You told me to see what’s inside.”
“I did.”
“So open it.”
“Not while you’re standing in broken glass.”
The sentence was so ordinary that for a moment none of them knew what to do with it.
Claire looked down.
One piece of crystal had landed on the hem of her cream dress.
Richard retrieved her cardigan from the back of another chair and folded it over his forearm.
“Move to the sofa.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re angry.”
“I can be both.”
“Yes.”
It was the closest he had come to sounding like himself.
Claire hated him slightly less for three seconds.
She stepped carefully around the glass and lowered herself onto the emerald velvet sofa. Vanessa remained by the table. She looked at the rain instead of any of them, one hand resting on the high curve of her stomach.
Claire had seen her pregnant only twice before tonight.
The first time had been at Andrew’s memorial reception.
Vanessa had arrived forty minutes late in a black dress cut deliberately close enough to make the pregnancy visible. The room had gone quiet in waves as people noticed. Andrew’s board chairman had dropped a canapé onto his cuff.
Claire had been twenty-two weeks pregnant then.
Vanessa had been almost twenty.
Until that moment, Claire had not known there was another child Andrew might have fathered.
Neither, apparently, had half the family.
Vanessa had walked directly to Claire, kissed her cheek, and whispered, “I didn’t want you to hear it from strangers.”
Then she had gone to Andrew’s mother and started crying.
Claire had not.
She had stood beside Andrew’s coffin with one hand on the polished wood and thought about the half-eaten bowl of cereal he had left in their kitchen the morning he died.
That stupid bowl had broken her more completely than the coffin.
Corn flakes gone soft in milk.
A spoon on the counter.
His phone charger still plugged beside the toaster because the outlet near the bedroom had stopped working and he kept forgetting to call the electrician.
People believed grief was made of important things.
Mostly it was not.
Mostly it was milk you had to pour down the sink.
Richard crossed to the mahogany case.
“Claire,” Ruiz said through the speaker, “I have two officers headed toward the estate. Given the weather, they’ll be a while. If you’re in immediate danger, leave.”
“No one is in danger,” Vanessa said.
Claire touched her bruised shoulder.
Vanessa’s eyes flicked toward the movement.
Richard unlocked the case.
The click sounded absurdly small.
Inside were three things.
The sealed white envelope.
A flash drive inside a clear evidence sleeve.
And a thick packet of photocopied records clipped together with a blue binder clip.
Claire stared at the packet.
Vanessa stared at the flash drive.
Richard noticed that.
Claire noticed him noticing.
“Why does she care about the drive?” Claire asked.
Vanessa turned on her.
“I don’t.”
“You didn’t look at anything else.”
“I looked at all of it.”
“No. You looked at that.”
“Claire.”
Richard sounded warning now.
She ignored him.
“What’s on the drive?”
Richard opened his mouth.
Vanessa answered first.
“Probably Andrew’s records.”
The room went silent.
Claire looked at her.
Richard did too.
Vanessa’s face remained controlled, but a flush had appeared above the neckline of her dress.
Claire said, “How would you know?”
“I don’t.”
“You just said—”
“I said probably.”
“Why probably?”
“Because this entire grotesque little investigation is about Andrew.”
“No,” Richard said.
Vanessa stopped.
Richard’s voice had become very quiet.
“The drive contains audit logs from the laboratory.”
The color drained from Vanessa’s face.
There it was.
Not proof.
Not yet.
But something human beings had been recognizing in one another long before laboratories existed.
Fear arriving before information.
Claire picked up the phone again.
“Detective.”
“I’m here.”
“I think she knew.”
Vanessa’s laugh returned, thinner this time.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
Ruiz said, “Mrs. Hale, I strongly suggest you stop volunteering statements.”
“Why? Am I under arrest?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t get to tell me what to say in my own house.”
“It’s not your house,” Claire said.
Vanessa looked at her.
The words had come out before Claire could stop them.
May you like
They were petty.
They were also true, at least temporarily. Hale House belonged to a trust whose trustees had postponed every significant distribution until Andrew’s estate and the question of his surviving children were settled.
