Chương 3
“Two days later.”
Daniel stopped moving.
“What happened two days later?”
Michael said nothing.
“Michael.”
“I found a piece of green paint under the front bumper.”
Rebecca’s Range Rover had been dark green.
Daniel’s mouth went numb.
He sat on the edge of a velvet chair.
Across the lounge, Claire’s eyes were fixed on him.
“What did Dad say?”
“He told me Rebecca swerved into him.”
Daniel looked at the floor.
“He said she was trying to get away from him,” Michael continued. “He said he followed her because they’d had an argument and he needed to stop her before she did something stupid.”
“What stupid thing?”
“I didn’t know then.”
“And now?”
Michael breathed in.
“She was going to the FBI.”
The word seemed ridiculous in the elegant little room.
Daniel stared at the white roses on the table.
“What are you talking about?”
“Carter Hospitality. The Alpine Ridge redevelopment accounts. She found payments to companies Dad controlled.”
Daniel’s first response was annoyance.
It was the same annoyed resistance he felt when someone presented an accusation too large to fit into ordinary life.
“No.”
“I have copies.”
“No, you have some story you’ve been building because Dad pushed you out of the company.”
“That happened six years later.”
“You hated him before that.”
“Yes.”
“Convenient.”
“I hated myself more.”
Daniel stood again.
He could not stay in one place.
“What did Rebecca have to do with company accounts?”
“She was reviewing the joint-venture documents.”
“For a land dispute.”
“That’s what you thought.”
Daniel looked at Claire.
She knew this part too.
Her face told him.
The betrayal shifted shape.
“You knew.”
“I knew what Michael claimed.”
“You sat in my kitchen and listened to me talk about the quarterly refinance while you knew this.”
“I didn’t know it was true.”
“But you knew the accusation.”
“Yes.”
Daniel turned away.
Michael spoke through the phone.
“Dan, listen to me.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“You don’t have to believe me. I wouldn’t believe me.”
“That may be the first intelligent thing you’ve said.”
“I deserve that.”
Daniel almost threw the phone.
Michael’s willingness to accept blame was infuriating. Daniel wanted the old Michael, the one who fought over everything. The brother who had once punched him in a hotel elevator when they were twenty-six because Daniel told him he was a coward. Daniel wanted something he could hit back.
Instead Michael sounded tired.
“I signed an affidavit this morning,” he said. “Claire has a copy.”
Daniel looked at her.
Claire nodded.
“It says everything I did. Everything Dad told me. The mechanic too.”
“What mechanic?”
“Larkin. He’s alive.”
Daniel’s memory produced an image without permission.
Harold Larkin at his father’s fiftieth birthday, thick hands, red suspenders, laughing beside a barbecue grill. Larkin had serviced Charles Carter’s cars for decades.
Michael continued.
“He remembers replacing the left front headlight assembly and repainting the quarter panel. Dad paid cash. Larkin kept handwritten books because he didn’t trust computers. His daughter found the ledger after he had a stroke last year.”
Daniel’s pulse climbed.
There it was.
A chain.
Not certainty.
Not yet.
But a chain.
The service log. Michael. The car repair.
Claire said softly, “There’s more.”
Daniel looked at her.
Michael heard.
“Show him.”
Daniel ended the call without saying goodbye.
Claire reached for the locked leather document case near the luggage.
Daniel had noticed the case when they arrived. He had assumed it contained work. Claire carried contracts for her design projects in expensive cases because she had once spilled coffee into a canvas portfolio and considered it a moral failure.
Now she entered four numbers into the brass combination lock.
The case opened.
Inside were photocopies, a flash drive, two envelopes, and a thin spiral notebook.
Daniel stared.
“How long have you had that?”
“Since yesterday.”
“Where was it?”
“Michael brought it to my office.”
“My brother came to your office.”
“Yes.”
Daniel smiled without warmth.
“You really committed to the secret-meeting part.”
Claire’s shoulders lowered.
“I did.”
Evelyn cleared her throat quietly.
Daniel had almost forgotten her.
She said, “Mr. Carter, perhaps you should sit down.”
“No.”
“All right.”
Claire removed an envelope.
“Rebecca sent Michael this the afternoon she died.”
Daniel did not take it.
“Why would Rebecca send Michael anything?”
Claire glanced down at the envelope.
“Because she didn’t trust your father.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“She didn’t trust you either.”
Daniel’s face emptied.
Claire looked up.
“I’m sorry.”
He said nothing.
“She thought you would defend him.”
“That’s what Michael told you?”
“No.”
Claire held out the envelope.
“That’s what she wrote.”
Daniel did not move.
Eight years of grief had arranged Rebecca into something cleaner than she had ever been while alive.
In memory she had become patient, sharp, funny, occasionally reckless, permanently thirty-four. She no longer left wet towels on bathroom floors or interrupted him halfway through stories or refused to admit when she was lost. The dead became edited because the living got tired.
Daniel had loved Rebecca.
He had also fought with her.
In the final months of their marriage they had fought often.
He had told himself grief erased none of that.
Apparently grief had erased more than he knew.
He took the envelope.
It had been opened along one edge.
The handwriting was Rebecca’s.
Michael—
If I’m wrong, burn this and make fun of me forever. If I’m right, Daniel is going to choose his father first. He always does when he’s afraid.
Daniel stopped reading.
His chest hurt.
Claire stood very still.
He continued.
I found payments that shouldn’t exist. I asked Charles. He told me to leave it alone. Tonight I’m showing him what I have because I want to give him one chance to explain it before I go outside the company.
Daniel looked up.
“When did Michael receive this?”
“That afternoon.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
Claire answered carefully.
“He says he thought she was exaggerating.”
Daniel laughed once.
May you like
“That sounds like him.”
He read further.
