Chapter 6: The Night Claire Called
Adrian called Detective Vera Huang at 11:47 p.m.
He had her personal number because she had worked Claire's accident case.
She had been the only officer who had called him back when he filed his first formal inquiry, eight months after the crash.
She had been sympathetic.
She had told him the evidence was consistent with an accident.
She had sounded like she believed it.
He wondered now whether she had.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Westwood."
"I need you to come to the estate.
Tonight."
A pause.
"What happened?"
"I found Claire's wedding ring in a hidden compartment in her bedroom.
A witness has come forward who was paid forty thousand dollars to stay quiet about what she saw the night of the crash.
My family attorney is in my entrance hall with a burner phone he used to warn someone tonight.
And my fiancée just climbed out a second-floor window."
Silence.
"I'll be there in twenty minutes," Vera said.
She was there in fourteen.
She came with two officers and a woman Adrian didn't recognize — mid-forties, dark coat, a badge clipped to her belt that read FINANCIAL CRIMES UNIT.
Vera shook Adrian's hand in the entrance hall and looked at Gerald without expression.
"Mr.
Fitch.
I was hoping we'd speak again someday."
Gerald said nothing.
"We're going to need that briefcase," Vera said.
Gerald handed it over without being asked twice.
Adrian took Vera upstairs to Claire's room.
He showed her the cedar compartment.
He placed the red Cartier case in her hands.
He watched her open it and look at the ring for a long moment before she carefully bagged it.
"She never took it off," Adrian said.
"Eleven years.
Not once."
"I know," Vera said quietly.
"I read the coroner's notes three times.
The ring absence was listed as consistent with impact ejection." She paused.
"I always thought that was a strange phrase."
"Did you believe it?"
Vera set the evidence bag on the vanity.
She looked at Claire's silver hairbrush.
At the slippers beside the chaise.
"No," she said.
"But I couldn't prove anything else."
Adrian sat on the edge of the bed.
The first time he had sat on it in three years.
The mattress held the same slight give he remembered.
"She called me that night," he said.
"An hour before she d\*ed.
She said she had something to tell me about Madison.
I told her we'd talk when I got back from San Francisco." He looked at his hands.
"I've replayed that call so many times I've worn it smooth.
Every word.
Every pause.
She sounded — not frightened.
Certain.
Like she had made a decision and was ready."
"What do you think she'd found?"
"The transfers.
The affair.
Maybe both." He paused.
"She had retained her own attorney the week before.
Gerald knew.
He didn't tell me."
Vera nodded slowly.
"The financial crimes unit has been building a case against a Westwood subsidiary for fourteen months.
We didn't have enough to move on it.
We didn't know who the co-signatory was on the holding company." She looked at him.
"We do now."
"Caleb."
"And Madison Cole." Vera picked up her notepad.
"Where is she?"
"Gone.
She went out a window." Adrian stood.
"Gerald sent a message on a burner phone to someone listed as C.
I think she had a second phone waiting somewhere.
I think she planned for this."
"She planned for a four-year-old to expose her?"
"She planned for the possibility that something might go wrong tonight." He looked at Vera.
"She's been planning for three years."
Vera's radio crackled.
She stepped into the hallway to answer it.
Adrian stayed in Claire's room.
He picked up the silver hairbrush from the vanity.
Set it back down exactly where it had been.
Vera returned to the doorway.
"We have her," she said.
"She made it four blocks.
She tried to get into a car registered to a shell company.
Our financial crimes team has had that vehicle flagged for six weeks." A pause.
"She's being brought in now."
Adrian looked up.
"And Caleb?"
Vera's expression didn't change.
"We're picking him up at his apartment.
He's there.
He didn't run."
Adrian nodded slowly.
May you like
"He knew he wouldn't get far," Adrian said.
"He's known that for three years."
