Chương 3
Daniel stared at her.
Claire wished the baby would move again.
It seemed suddenly important that he did.
“What does that mean?” Daniel asked.
“It means the copies I saved in April aren’t in the archive.”
“Files disappear.”
“Not six files with the same custodian.”
“You think Evelyn deleted audit records?”
“I think someone did.”
“And you were just going to hand Joanne papers during a foundation dinner?”
“I was going to ask her to meet me Monday morning.”
Daniel laughed without humor.
“That’s somehow worse.”
“It was the only place I knew she’d be without going through Evelyn’s office.”
“My father was twenty feet away.”
“Your father is the CEO.”
“He is also your father-in-law.”
“That’s exactly the problem.”
Daniel looked at her for a long time.
Claire regretted the sentence and did not take it back.
A nurse entered to check the monitor.
She was young, with purple glasses and a small tattoo of a lemon behind one ear. She adjusted the elastic band around Claire’s stomach, glanced once at Daniel, and said, “You two can either keep arguing quietly or go fully silent. The halfway thing makes the baby move off the sensor.”
Daniel looked embarrassed.
Claire almost smiled.
The nurse found the heartbeat again.
There it was.
Fast, regular, stubborn.
“There,” she said. “That’s what we want.”
When she left, neither of them spoke for a while.
Daniel sat again.
“My father loves you.”
Claire closed her eyes.
“That isn’t relevant.”
“It is to me.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re talking like you think he’s part of this.”
“I don’t know who’s part of it.”
Daniel looked down at his one sock.
“You think I am?”
“I think you’re asking me not to find out.”
“I asked you not to work while you’re in a hospital bed.”
“You also said seventeen million was impossible.”
“Because it should be.”
“Those aren’t the same thing.”
“I know.”
He sounded tired.
That irritated her more than anger would have.
Daniel was tired because his wife had nearly fallen down a staircase, because his unborn child was being monitored, because the company he expected to run someday might have a financial crime inside it.
Claire understood all of those things.
She still wanted him to suffer in exactly the way she was suffering.
It was petty.
She let herself have it for fifteen seconds.
Then she reached toward him.
Daniel took her hand.
At Hale House, Marcus found Evelyn sitting on the edge of a silk sofa with her shoes off.
Her red blazer remained buttoned.
A glass of water sat untouched on the table.
She looked smaller without the high heels.
That annoyed him.
He wanted her to look like what he felt.
Dangerous.
Instead she looked like a woman with a headache.
“Claire says you pushed her.”
Evelyn stared at the carpet.
“I reached for the folder.”
“You said that.”
“She pulled it away.”
“You said that too.”
“She stepped backward.”
“You’ve said that three times.”
Evelyn looked up.
“Because that is what happened.”
Marcus shut the door.
“Security cameras were turned off tonight.”
“I know.”
He felt something cold move through him.
“How?”
“I approved the donor privacy request with Denton.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
“You personally approved turning off cameras in my house?”
“It’s not unusual for private events.”
“It is unusual for you to involve yourself in event security.”
“I was helping Nora.”
“You don’t help Nora. You send her three-paragraph emails because you dislike the placement of votive candles.”
Evelyn’s mouth tightened.
“There were governors, judges, people who don’t want footage of themselves circulating.”
“There were no governors.”
“Former governor.”
“Don’t.”
She looked away.
Marcus moved closer.
“Why did Claire have documents with your handwriting on them?”
“I don’t know what she had.”
“You saw the folder.”
“I saw papers.”
“You reached for them.”
“Yes.”
“So you know something.”
“I know Claire has spent six months acting like she was appointed prosecutor of the company.”
Marcus said nothing.
Evelyn gave a dry little laugh.
“Don’t pretend you haven’t complained about it.”
“I complained that she asks questions at dinner.”
“You said she treats every spreadsheet like a crime scene.”
“I also said she was usually right.”
Evelyn’s face flickered.
There it was.
Not fear.
Resentment.
Marcus had seen it before and misnamed it as professional irritation.
“Did you move money from the employee medical reserve?”
Evelyn’s eyes stopped.
Marcus waited.
Twenty years of partnership collapsed into a three-second silence.
“Seventeen million,” he said.
“Who told you that?”
Wrong answer.
Evelyn seemed to hear it after she spoke.
Marcus lowered himself into the chair opposite her.
His knee hurt.
He realized blood from his hand had dried along his cuff.
“Why?”
She pressed her fingertips into her forehead.
“Marcus.”
“Why?”
“It isn’t what she thinks.”
“I don’t know what she thinks.”
“You just said the number.”
“Because Daniel called me from the ambulance.”
Evelyn looked toward the window.
“So she told him.”
“Yes.”
“She has no context.”
“Then give me some.”
Silence.
Outside the sitting room, the old house continued to empty. Coat hangers clicked in the foyer. A man laughed awkwardly somewhere near the front door. Staff moved through rooms collecting half-full glasses.
Evelyn finally looked at Marcus.
“Northgate missed its financing window.”
“I know.”
“No. You know what we told the board.”
Marcus felt his stomach tighten.
“What did you tell the board?”
“That the lender extension closed on time.”
“It did.”
“It closed eleven days late.”
He stared at her.
“We had payroll, contractor draws, and two letters of credit due in the gap. Lansing was already thirty-eight million over budget. If we disclosed a liquidity problem then, First Federal would have reopened the covenant package.”
“So you took reserve funds.”
“Temporarily.”
“From employees.”
“From an overfunded account.”
“It was not operating cash.”
“I know what it was.”
“Apparently not.”
She stood.
Marcus did not.
“You called me at two in the morning from Chicago three years ago,” Evelyn said. “Do you remember?”
May you like
“No.”
“I do. You told me, ‘Whatever happens, nobody misses a paycheck.’”
