Chương 3
“You can’t hold me here.”
Ortiz nodded toward the open front door. “You’re not under arrest at this moment. You are free to leave the residence, but you may not remove any devices, documents, or other property covered by the warrant.”
Ethan looked toward the stairs, then toward the garage entrance, calculating what he could reach.
“Your wallet is on the bedroom dresser,” Victoria said. “Your keys are in the kitchen drawer.”
He looked at her sharply.
She had placed them there herself.
For months, Ethan had joked that Victoria could enter a room and know which object had been moved half an inch. He said it with affection when clients were present. In private, he called it her compulsion.
That night, it had become logistics.
Ethan walked toward the kitchen with an officer beside him.
Madison remained by the bench.
“Did he put money in my name?” she asked.
Ortiz said, “You need counsel.”
“I can’t afford counsel.”
“That does not change my advice.”
Madison looked at Victoria. Fear had begun to replace indignation, sharpening her young face.
“You knew?”
“I knew the company existed.”
“You knew it used my name?”
“I learned three days ago.”
“And you still let me come here?”
“I didn’t invite you.”
“Ethan said—”
She stopped.
Victoria waited.
Madison lowered her voice. “He said you were in Boston.”
“I was in the driveway.”
A uniformed officer passed them carrying Ethan’s laptop in a padded evidence case. Another photographed the smart-home control panel.
Madison watched the equipment move through the house.
“I didn’t steal anything,” she said.
Victoria believed that Madison believed herself.
That did not make it true.
Ethan returned wearing loafers without socks. He had corrected his shirt buttons. His wallet made a square outline in his back pocket. He looked almost composed again, except that he had forgotten his wedding ring. He still wore it, and his fingers kept finding it.
“I’m leaving,” he said.
Ortiz nodded. “An officer will escort you to the property line.”
“This is my property.”
“Then you’ll recognize the line.”
He turned to Victoria. His voice lowered.
“You sent those photographs to my mother.”
“You put them on your phone.”
“You sent them.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted to humiliate me.”
Victoria looked toward the anniversary photograph.
“I wanted to make it impossible for you to tell everyone I misunderstood.”
“You did misunderstand.”
Madison made a sound behind him, not quite a laugh.
Ethan’s jaw tightened. “You have no idea what you’ve done to the company.”
“I have some idea.”
“Clients will hear about this.”
“They’ll hear about the missing money too.”
“There is no missing money.”
“Then you should have no trouble explaining it.”
He stepped toward her. The officer beside him moved between them.
Ethan stopped.
For ten years, he had known exactly how close to stand when he wanted her to yield without appearing to threaten her. He would lower his voice, tilt his head, and speak as though he were protecting her from the consequences of her own confusion.
He could not use that distance now.
There were witnesses.
His eyes moved to the blue reflections crossing the windows.
“You think they’re here for me,” he said. “Wait until they start looking at you.”
Then he left.
Victoria listened to his footsteps move across the entry hall, the front door open, and the night receive him.
No officer put handcuffs on him.
She had expected relief. Instead, she felt embarrassed by how much she had expected the visible completion of an arrest. Hands behind his back. A bowed head. Some physical shape for consequence.
He walked down the driveway under his own power.
Madison sat again.
“Where am I supposed to go?” she asked.
Ortiz looked at her bare feet. “Do you have anyone who can pick you up?”
“My car is at the Marston.”
Victoria’s stomach tightened.
The Marston again.
Madison noticed.
“It isn’t what you think.”
Victoria almost smiled at the uselessness of the phrase. Ethan had used it less than ten minutes earlier.
Madison saw that too. Her face changed.
“I mean tonight,” she said. “He picked me up there. There was a fundraiser.”
“I know.”
“You were supposed to be out of town.”
“I know.”
“He told me you were separated.”
Victoria looked at the white satin dress, the perfume lingering in her hallway, the familiar certainty with which Madison had entered the bedroom upstairs.
“Did he tell you we were separated before or after you attended our anniversary dinner?”
Madison looked down.
The tenth-anniversary dinner had been held at the house two weeks earlier. Fifty guests had eaten beneath strings of warm lights in the rear courtyard. Madison had managed the event through the boutique hospitality firm that handled Hale Residential Design’s launches and client dinners.
She had adjusted the place cards, directed servers, and brought Victoria a stain-removal cloth after red wine touched the cuff of her dress.
At the end of the evening, Madison had taken the framed photograph now standing beside Ethan’s seized phone.
Victoria remembered thanking her.
Madison twisted the strap of her purse around two fingers. “He said appearances were important because of the company.”
“Of course he did.”
“He said you’d agreed not to announce anything until after the board vote.”
“There was no separation.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew enough then.”
Madison’s eyes hardened for an instant. “You don’t know what I knew.”
“No. I know what you were willing not to ask.”
Ortiz exhaled through her nose. “This conversation is helping no one.”
Victoria turned away.
May you like
An officer opened cabinets in the study. Another carried a desktop hard drive from the upstairs office. Each movement made the house less private. Drawers remained open. Cables trailed across the floor. Evidence labels appeared on objects Victoria had selected for their color and proportion.
The house had been completed three years earlier as a showcase for Victoria’s firm. Architectural magazines had photographed the suspended staircase, the limestone kitchen, the hidden climate system, and the glass wall that retracted toward the pool.
