Chương 6
“Because he’ll know.”
“Yes.”
“And if he knows, Margaret knows.”
“Yes.”
“And if they know, they start destroying things.”
“We’ve preserved the corporate records.”
“Not everything.”
Rebecca leaned back.
“What are you afraid exists?”
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t a reason.”
Elena looked at the photograph of Sophie on her phone.
The baby had two bottom teeth now.
Elena had missed them arriving.
“I’m afraid he’ll run with her.”
Rebecca’s anger disappeared.
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
“He has money.”
“So do you.”
“He has family.”
“So do you.”
“My parents are dead.”
Rebecca gave her a flat look.
“You have me, idiot.”
Elena laughed.
It came out badly and turned into crying.
Rebecca sat beside her without touching her.
The next morning, they filed.
Daniel received notice at 10:14 a.m.
At 10:21 he called Rebecca.
At 10:23 he called again.
At 10:29 Margaret called.
At 10:31 Daniel sent a message that read:
IF THIS IS SOME KIND OF SICK JOKE I WILL DESTROY YOU.
At 10:42:
ELENA?
At 10:47:
Please.
At 11:03:
Is she alive?
Rebecca showed Elena the messages.
Elena stared at the last one.
“Who does he mean?”
Rebecca understood.
“You or Sophie?”
“Yes.”
They did not answer.
Police arrived at Margaret’s house at noon with a temporary custody order.
Daniel did not run.
He sat on the living-room floor with Sophie in his lap and handed her to a social worker without resistance.
The social worker later told Elena that Daniel cried.
That detail complicated everything in a way Elena hated.
She wanted a villain who did not love their daughter.
Instead she had a husband who might have tried to kill his wife and still knew exactly how Sophie liked to be rocked before a nap.
The first time Elena held her daughter again, Sophie did not recognize her.
Nobody had warned Elena what that would feel like.
Rebecca had said babies adjusted.
The pediatrician had said nine-month-olds could reconnect through consistent care.
The therapist had explained attachment disruption in careful language.
None of that prepared Elena for Sophie twisting away from her scarred face and reaching toward the social worker.
Elena smiled anyway.
“Hi, bug.”
Sophie began crying.
Elena handed her back.
Then she went into the bathroom, locked the door, and sat on the closed toilet with both hands pressed against her mouth.
She stayed there seven minutes.
When she came out, Rebecca was pretending to read an outdated copy of People magazine.
“You ready?” Rebecca asked.
“No.”
“Okay.”
Elena picked up Sophie again.
“Give her to me.”
The second time, the baby lasted twenty seconds.
The third time, almost a minute.
By evening, she slept against Elena’s chest.
Elena did not move for forty-three minutes because she was afraid to wake her.
That night, in a rented townhouse with a police car occasionally passing outside, Elena changed a diaper at two seventeen in the morning and discovered Sophie had developed a habit of kicking both feet during diaper changes.
“You didn’t used to do that.”
Sophie kicked harder.
Elena laughed quietly.
The scars on her chest pulled.
She did not care.
Daniel did not see Sophie after that.
A family-court judge issued supervised visitation pending the investigation. Daniel’s attorneys advised him not to attend because anything he said could become evidence.
He chose the attorneys.
That choice mattered to Elena more than she expected.
She had spent months fearing he would take Sophie.
Now he had an opportunity to see his daughter in a supervised room for two hours and declined because it might hurt his case.
People were rarely exposed by grand moments alone.
Sometimes they exposed themselves by what they were unwilling to risk.
The financial investigation widened.
North Coast Advisory, Harlow Municipal Consulting, and a third company called Birch Avenue Strategies all fed money into an investment partnership controlled by Daniel and Margaret through an attorney in Nevada.
Some of the money had funded legitimate land acquisitions.
Some had covered Bennett Development debt that Daniel had hidden from the board.
Almost nine hundred thousand dollars had gone toward speculative cryptocurrency losses Daniel never disclosed.
Another six hundred thousand had serviced a private loan Margaret guaranteed.
The story was uglier than theft and less elegant than conspiracy.
They had been trying to keep the company from collapsing.
Bennett Development had overleveraged three projects after interest rates rose. Daniel concealed the losses because he believed disclosure would trigger lender action and destroy the company his father built.
Margaret agreed.
They moved money.
They lied to auditors.
They created vendors to disguise it.
Then Elena found the trail.
Isaiah sat across from Elena in the townhouse kitchen one afternoon eating sunflower seeds into an empty coffee cup.
“You know what rich-family crime usually looks like?”
Elena glanced at him.
“I assume you’re about to tell me.”
“Bookkeeping.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“Everybody wants secret rooms and private jets. Mostly it’s spreadsheets and somebody saying they’ll fix it next quarter.”
Elena looked down at the financial statements.
“So why the fire?”
Isaiah stopped chewing.
“That’s the question.”
They finally found the answer in a florist’s invoice.
Margaret bought flowers constantly.
Birthdays, funerals, openings, hospital stays, thank-you arrangements for people she did not like.
Three days before the fire, her personal assistant purchased a $240 orchid arrangement for a retired fire inspector named Leonard Pike.
Pike had worked as a consultant for Bennett Development.
Isaiah found him in Florida.
Pike refused to speak.
Then Rebecca sent him a subpoena notice.
He hired a lawyer.
Two weeks later, his lawyer contacted prosecutors.
Pike had not set the fire.
He had, however, advised Margaret during a phone call that an overloaded electrical line near a damaged breaker panel could produce a fire investigators might initially consider accidental.
He claimed the conversation was hypothetical.
Margaret claimed she had been asking about fire risk in an old company-owned property.
Phone records showed she called Daniel eleven minutes after speaking to Pike.
May you like
Daniel called an electrician.
Not to repair anything.
