Chương 4
“Did my father fall?”
“Yes.”
“Was anyone with him?”
Owen looked toward the dark windows.
“You need to ask Eleanor.”
“I’m asking you.”
“And I’m telling you that any complete answer must come from her.”
Daniel laughed once. The sound surprised him. “She hired you to say that?”
“Your father hired me.”
“My father is dead.”
“Yes.”
The word contained more weight than its size should have allowed.
Owen opened his briefcase and removed a yellow legal pad. “Vanessa will likely be released tonight after arraignment arrangements are made. There may be a temporary protective order preventing contact with Eleanor. Depending on the prosecutor’s decision, there may also be restrictions involving you or this property.”
“This is her house.”
“It is jointly titled.”
“I don’t care whose name is on it.”
“You may tomorrow.”
Daniel looked at him.
Owen slid the pad closer but did not write. “You need separate counsel.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
The hospital room was dim when Daniel arrived after ten. Eleanor lay awake with her injured wrist wrapped and elevated on a pillow. Her silver hair had loosened from its bun. Without earrings, lipstick, or the careful architecture of her clothes, she looked older than sixty-eight.
“You took your time,” she said.
“I was with Owen.”
Her mouth tightened.
“He told me about the money.”
“He had no right.”
“He said there was a land sale.”
“There was.”
“For land we owned eleven days.”
Eleanor turned her face toward the window. The glass reflected the bed, the equipment, and Daniel standing near the door.
“I don’t want to discuss this while I am attached to a blood-pressure monitor.”
“Then tell me when you do want to discuss it.”
“Tomorrow.”
“You said not at the party. Then not with the paramedics. Now not here.”
“Because places matter.”
“Dad died in our house. Vanessa tried to kill you outside it. Which place would be convenient?”
The monitor registered a faster pulse.
Daniel saw it and hated himself for noticing.
He sat in the chair beside the bed.
For several seconds, neither spoke. A cart squeaked past in the hallway. Somewhere nearby, a man complained that the television remote did not work.
Eleanor flexed the fingers of her uninjured hand.
“Richard was drinking,” she said.
“That was in the report.”
“Yes.”
“Was he alone?”
“No.”
Daniel waited.
She looked at him. “I was there.”
“You told me you found him.”
“I did find him.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“He was alive when I found him.”
The room seemed to contract around the sound of the monitor.
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“You called an ambulance.”
“Eventually.”
Daniel stood.
Eleanor’s voice sharpened. “Do not make a shape out of one word before I finish.”
“How long?”
“Perhaps eight minutes.”
He stared at her.
She looked away first.
“Why?”
“Because he had fallen at the bottom of the stairs, and there was blood, and I could not understand what I was seeing.”
“You waited eight minutes because you were confused?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Her wrapped wrist shifted on the pillow.
“Thomas Vale was in the house.”
Vanessa’s father had died three years earlier of pancreatic cancer. Daniel remembered him as a broad, silver-haired man who ate too fast and never removed his jacket at dinner. Thomas had funded museums, schools, and political campaigns. At Daniel and Vanessa’s wedding, he had called the Hales an American dynasty and raised his glass high enough to spill wine on his cuff.
“What was he doing there?”
“Talking to your father.”
“About what?”
“Money.”
“The two million?”
“That came later.”
Daniel sat again because his legs had begun to feel unreliable.
“Start at the beginning.”
Eleanor gave him a tired look. “There is no beginning. There are only points at which people decide the story can safely start.”
“Then choose the dangerous one.”
For a moment, he saw pride in her face. It vanished quickly.
“Your father discovered that Thomas had been moving money through the Hale Foundation. Donations went out, consulting payments came back through companies Thomas controlled, and both men benefited.”
“Dad was involved?”
“At first.”
Daniel lowered his eyes.
The foundation had been Richard’s public virtue. Scholarships, arts grants, housing initiatives. After his death, Daniel had expanded it and placed his own name beside his father’s on the annual report.
“How much?”
“I never knew the full amount.”
“And then Dad wanted out.”
“He wanted to blame Thomas for all of it.”
“That sounds like him.”
Eleanor flinched, almost invisibly.
Daniel had not meant to be cruel. He did not apologize.
She continued. “Thomas came to the house that afternoon. They argued in the library. Richard had been drinking. I heard something break and went in. Your father told me to leave.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“What happened?”
Eleanor’s gaze shifted toward the door. A nurse passed without entering.
“Thomas threatened to expose him. Richard laughed. He said no one would believe a man who had built his fortune by borrowing other people’s respectability.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they knew each other’s crimes.”
Daniel felt a dull pressure behind his eyes.
“And then?”
“Thomas left the library. Richard followed him into the hall. They were still shouting. I stepped between them.”
“Did Thomas push him?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
Eleanor closed her eyes.
The monitor continued its patient count.
“I put my hands on his chest.”
Daniel stopped breathing.
“He grabbed my arm,” she said. “I pulled away. He had one foot on the top step. He lost his balance.”
“You pushed him.”
“I pushed him away from me.”
“He fell.”
“Yes.”
“And you waited eight minutes.”
“Thomas came back.”
“Why?”
“He heard the fall.”
Daniel stood again, slower this time. “What did he do?”
“He checked Richard’s pulse. He said Richard was alive but barely. I reached for the phone. Thomas stopped me.”
“Stopped you how?”
“He took it from my hand.”
“And you let him?”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
May you like
“Everything.”
The answer was so simple that Daniel nearly shouted.
