Chương 4
Where was Victoria?
How hard did the tray move?
What had Victoria said?
Had Claire consumed alcohol?
Had she taken any medication that evening?
Could anyone else have heard Victoria's statement?
Claire answered.
When she repeated the sentence about never making it downstairs, Adrian looked at the floor.
Chen noticed.
She noticed everything.
“Mr. Cole, you did not hear Ms. Hale say that?”
“No. I was below them.”
“You heard your wife's fall?”
“I heard the tray. Then Claire.”
“And you picked up the bottle.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I wasn't thinking.”
Chen wrote that down.
“I appreciate you saying that.”
“I understand it was a mistake.”
“It complicates things. It doesn't erase them.”
The bottle, Chen explained, would be tested. Claire's doctors could order toxicology if clinically appropriate, but testing would not magically produce a complete story. Pills could be moved between containers. Labels could be old. Bodies metabolized substances. Timing mattered.
Claire had not realized how badly she wanted science to behave like television until Detective Chen refused to let it.
She wanted one machine to announce the truth.
Instead she had questions.
Chen asked who had access to Claire's medication.
Claire and Adrian looked at each other.
“Elena,” Claire said. “Maybe the cleaning staff. Adrian.”
“Victoria,” Adrian added.
Chen's pen stopped.
“Ms. Hale had regular access to your private rooms?”
Adrian answered carefully.
“She had access to the house.”
“That wasn't my question.”
Claire said, “Yes.”
Adrian glanced at her.
Chen looked between them.
“Why?”
“Because nobody thought she was dangerous,” Claire said.
The detective closed her notebook.
“That is usually how access works.”
Claire was discharged shortly after seven.
They went home through a side entrance because two photographers were already outside the gates.
Adrian stopped in the foyer.
The staircase was spotless.
The tray was gone.
The papers had been collected.
The marble had been cleaned.
Claire hated that most of all.
A house this expensive could erase evidence of panic in under twelve hours.
Elena came from the hall.
She looked as though she had not slept.
Her gray hair was pulled into a loose knot, and she had changed from her black dinner uniform into jeans and a cardigan.
“I left the top landing alone until police finished,” she said immediately.
Adrian nodded.
“Thank you.”
Elena looked at Claire's wristband.
“How is the baby?”
“Fine.”
Elena pressed her lips together and nodded several times.
“Good.”
Then she hugged Claire.
Elena was not usually a hugger.
Claire held on longer than either of them expected.
When they separated, Elena wiped under one eye with the heel of her hand and seemed irritated at herself.
“Your breakfast is in the warmer.”
“I don't think I can eat.”
“You can eat toast.”
“That sounded like an order.”
“It is.”
Adrian said, “She terrifies me too.”
Elena looked at him.
“You should be more terrified.”
For once Adrian had no answer.
Claire sat at the kitchen island twenty minutes later with toast she did not want.
The kitchen smelled faintly of burnt rosemary from the previous night's dinner.
A dishwasher hummed.
Outside the window, two groundskeepers were repairing a sprinkler beside the hedge, apparently unaware that by eight thirty their employers had become a local news item.
Claire liked them for that.
One of them knelt in wet grass and held up a broken plastic fitting as if it had personally offended him.
Normal life continued without permission.
Adrian was on the other side of the kitchen speaking to his general counsel.
He had suspended Victoria before breakfast.
Not fired.
Suspended.
Claire listened to him choose every word.
“No access to company systems.”
Pause.
“No, not until the board meets.”
Pause.
“Her building credentials too.”
Pause.
“Yes.”
Pause.
“No statement beyond saying she's on administrative leave.”
Claire ate a corner of toast.
Adrian hung up.
“You're angry.”
She chewed.
“You say that like you've discovered a new market.”
“I'm not asking you not to be.”
“Good.”
He came to the island.
“I should have told you about the audit.”
“Yes.”
“I should have limited her access here.”
“Yes.”
“I shouldn't have let professional history become an excuse.”
Claire looked at him.
“You practiced that.”
“No.”
“It had bullet points.”
“It did not.”
“The third sentence had a semicolon in it.”
Despite everything, his mouth moved slightly.
Claire set down the toast.
“I don't want a good apology.”
He nodded.
“I know.”
“I want to know why you kept choosing not to see it.”
His smile vanished.
“That may take longer.”
“Okay.”
She looked toward the hall.
“Then take longer.”
That afternoon, the first article appeared online.
VIOLENT INCIDENT AT BILLIONAIRE ADRIAN COLE'S GREENWICH ESTATE.
By dinner, another site had photographs of Victoria entering her attorney's office in Manhattan.
By the following morning, someone had leaked that police were investigating a dispute involving Claire's medication.
The third headline used the phrase DOMESTIC DRAMA.
Claire threw her phone onto the couch.
It bounced once.
Adrian, sitting across from her, said nothing.
The article described Victoria as a respected executive and Claire as Adrian Cole's “much younger second wife.”
Claire was his first wife.
Accuracy had apparently become optional.
“What am I supposed to be the second wife of?” she asked.
Adrian looked up from his laptop.
“Me, according to people with poor research standards.”
“Who was the first?”
“I hope she got the lake house.”
Claire laughed before she meant to.
It hurt her bruised shoulder.
She winced.
Adrian closed the laptop.
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
The phrase hung between them.
Claire regretted it instantly.
Adrian did too.
Neither tried to repair it.
Detective Chen called that evening.
The pills remaining in the bottle did not appear consistent with what the label described, but laboratory analysis would take time. Claire's medical team had found evidence of a sedating medication in her system, though Chen emphasized that determining how it got there was another question.
Claire sat on the edge of the bed after the call.
May you like
Adrian remained by the dresser.
“What does that prove?” he asked.
