Chapter 6: The Woman in the Records
I called my lawyer from the cab on the way back to the hospital.
His name was Graham.
I had used him once before, four years ago, for a boundary dispute with a neighbour, and I had kept his number because he was the kind of man who listened before he spoke.
He listened now without interrupting while I gave him the short version.
When I finished, he was quiet for three seconds.
"Are you still in the hospital?" he said.
"On my way back."
"Good.
Stay there today.
Don't confront Daniel again until I've looked at what's on that drive." He paused.
"Can you get it to me this afternoon?"
"I'll send my mother."
"All right.
One more thing — do not tell Daniel you've spoken to me.
Not yet."
"He'll guess."
"Let him guess.
Guessing is not knowing, and right now that gap is useful to us."
I ended the call as the cab pulled up to the hospital entrance.
My mother met me in the corridor outside my room.
She had come back while I was out, and she had brought a change of clothes and a container of soup she had made that morning.
She looked at my face and didn't ask how it had gone.
She handed me the soup.
"Ethan called," she said.
"He wants to visit you and his father this afternoon."
Ethan was fourteen.
Sophie was eleven.
"Tell him tomorrow," I said.
"Tell him I'm resting."
"He knows something is wrong."
"I know." I sat down on the edge of the bed.
"I just need one more day before I have to explain any of this to them."
My mother sat in the chair beside me.
"What did you find out?"
I told her about Carole.
About the recording.
About Marcus.
About the plan to file for divorce while I was still recovering from surgery.
My mother's face went through several things very quickly.
She settled on a stillness that I recognized.
It was the same face she had made at my father's funeral.
The face she made when something was too large for an immediate reaction.
"He planned it before the transplant," she said.
"Yes."
"While you were being tested.
While you were going to pre-operative appointments."
"Yes."
She looked at her hands in her lap.
"I drove you to two of those appointments," she said quietly.
"I sat in the waiting room while they took your bl00d.
I brought you flowers when you came home from the surgery." She looked up.
"He sat across from me at that kitchen table and thanked me for taking care of you."
"I know."
"He looked me in the eye."
"I know, Mom."
She pressed her lips together.
Then she picked up the USB drive from where I had set it on the blanket and put it in her coat pocket.
"I'll take this to your lawyer," she said.
"Right now."
She left without finishing her tea.
I sat alone for a while.
The soup was good.
I ate half of it and then set it aside and opened my laptop and searched for Patricia Holt, property developer.
She had a company website.
Clean, professional.
Residential and commercial development in the tri-county area.
A headshot on the About page: a woman in her mid-fifties, dark hair, a composed smile.
I searched her name alongside Daniel's company name.
Nothing obvious.
I searched her name alongside Hargrove Solutions.
One result.
A planning application from two years ago.
A commercial development site.
The application listed two interested parties.
Patricia Holt's company was one.
The other was a subsidiary I didn't recognize.
I searched the subsidiary.
It took me eleven minutes and three different business registry searches to trace it back to a parent company.
The parent company had one director.
Daniel.
I stared at the screen.
They weren't just connected through the money transfers.
They had been business partners.
Actively, formally, on public record.
And Daniel had never once mentioned her name.
I picked up my phone and called Graham back.
"I found something else," I said.
"Tell me."
I told him about Patricia Holt.
About the planning application.
About the subsidiary.
He was quiet for a moment.
"That changes the nature of the financial exposure significantly," he said.
"If they were co-directors in a development project and he was moving marital assets into it without your knowledge or consent, that's not just a divorce matter.
That potentially involves fraud."
"Carole thought the payments to Patricia stopped when Daniel was admitted to hospital," I said.
"And they started six months before his kidneys began failing."
Another silence.
"I'm not going to speculate about what that means," Graham said carefully.
"But I want you to do something for me.
Don't search her name any further tonight.
Don't contact her.
Don't let Daniel know you've found this.
Can you do that?"
"Yes."
"I'm going to make some calls tomorrow morning," he said.
"There are people who handle this kind of financial investigation properly.
People whose findings will hold up." He paused.
"You did the right thing calling me."
I set the laptop on the bedside table.
Through the wall, somewhere down the corridor, I could hear the low sound of a television in another room.
A laugh track.
Something ordinary and distant.
My phone lit up with a text from an unsaved number.
Not Carole's number.
A different one.
*Stay out of things that don't concern you.
You got what you wanted.
He's alive.
Take your children and walk away.*
May you like
I read it twice.
Then I screenshot it and forwarded it to Graham.
