Chapter 6: What Sloane Uncovered
Sloane called me eight days later.
"Are you somewhere private?" she said.
I was in the car, parked outside the grocery store.
"Yes."
"I'm going to send you a file.
Forty-one photographs and a summary document.
I want you to read the summary first before you look at the photographs."
"How bad is it?"
A pause.
"It's thorough," she said.
"I'm sorry."
I sat in the car for a long time after she hung up.
People walked past with their carts.
A woman lifted a toddler into a car seat two spaces over.
The sun was completely ordinary.
I opened the file.
The summary was four pages.
I read it twice.
Dana Whitfield was not a colleague on the Whitfield account.
She was the daughter of the firm's largest client.
Thirty-one years old.
Barrett had been seeing her for at least fourteen months — the same fourteen months as the hidden account.
They had stayed together in a hotel in the city on nine separate occasions.
There were dinner reservations, a weekend in a coastal town three hours away, a bracelet purchased from a jeweler on Clement Street.
The fourth page of the summary listed what Sloane had found about the hidden account.
It wasn't just savings.
Barrett had been paying for the hotel stays, the dinners, the bracelet, and three months of rent on an apartment Dana had moved into in February — from money drawn from our household account.
Our money.
My money.
I called Petra.
"I read it," I said.
"I know.
I'm sorry, Renee."
"He used our joint account."
"Yes."
"For her rent."
"Yes."
I pressed my hand flat against the steering wheel.
"What do I do?"
"You do nothing yet.
You let me do my job." Her voice was careful and very clear.
"We have documentation of financial misconduct.
That changes the shape of everything.
But I need you to hold on for a little longer without tipping him off."
"How much longer?"
"Two weeks.
Maybe three.
I need to file some paperwork quietly and get a clear picture of all the assets before he has any reason to start moving things."
"And if he moves things before that?"
"Then we move faster.
But right now, the advantage is yours.
He doesn't know what you know."
I looked through the windshield at the ordinary street.
"He told me I was too old," I said.
"He said it like he was doing me a favor.
Preparing me for something."
"He was," Petra said.
"He just didn't expect you to be ready first."
I drove home.
I made dinner.
Barrett came in, poured himself a drink, and told me Dana's father's firm had just renewed their contract for another three years.
"That's wonderful," I said.
He smiled.
He looked relaxed.
He looked like a man with no reason to be careful.
"Big celebration dinner on Friday," he said.
"You don't mind if I go without you?
It's mostly work people."
I set his plate in front of him.
"Of course not," I said.
"Go and enjoy yourself."
May you like
He picked up his fork.
He had no idea that on Friday, while he was at that dinner, Petra would be filing the first set of documents.
