Chapter 7: What Diane Knew
I called her back from my car, parked in the driveway with the engine off.
She answered on the first ring.
"Stella." Her voice was low and careful, with a faint accent I couldn't immediately place.
Not British.
South African, maybe, or Australian.
"Thank you for calling."
"You texted me from Everett's phone," I said.
"From his hotel room phone, yes.
He's in the shower." A brief pause.
"I don't have much time."
"Then say what you need to say."
"I've been with Everett for three years," she said.
"He told me he was separated.
That the divorce was already in process.
That you had both agreed to it and were simply waiting for the paperwork." Another pause.
"He told me that every month for three years."
I looked at the front of my house through the windshield.
"He lied to you," I said.
"Yes." Her voice was flat.
"I understand that now." I heard her exhale slowly.
"I'm not calling to apologize.
I don't think an apology from me is what you need.
I'm calling because when he came out of the airport and his cards didn't work, he called someone before he called you."
"Who?"
"A man named Royce.
I don't know his last name.
Everett calls him when he needs things handled." She paused.
"I've heard that name three times in the past year, always when Everett was worried about money or the situation at home.
After he called Royce this morning, he was calmer.
He said — and I'm telling you this exactly — he said, *'She can file whatever she wants.
By the time she figures out what's in that house, it'll already be gone.'"*
My hand tightened on the phone.
"What's in the house?" I asked.
"I don't know.
I'm sorry.
That's all I heard." She lowered her voice further.
"I know you have no reason to trust me.
But I've spent three years believing a man who was lying to both of us, and I'm not willing to help him do anything else." A short pause.
"I thought you should know."
"Diane," I said.
"Will you put that in writing?
What you just told me?"
A long silence.
"Yes," she said.
"I will."
"Send it to this number.
Everything you just told me, in your own words."
"All right."
"And Diane—" I stopped.
There were a hundred things I could have said.
I chose the only one that mattered.
"Thank you."
She hung up.
I sat in the driveway for two minutes.
Then I went inside, walked past the kitchen where Shirley was making breakfast, went straight to the study, and started going through every drawer.
I didn't know what I was looking for.
But Everett did.
And he had called someone to make sure I wouldn't find it.
The study was tidy.
Everett kept it that way — obsessively, actually, in a way I had always taken as a personality trait rather than a precaution.
Locked filing cabinet in the corner.
Locked desk drawer on the right side.
A small fireproof safe behind the framed print on the wall that I had always assumed held our passports and the spare house key.
I found the spare key to the filing cabinet in the back of the top desk drawer, taped to the underside of a pencil tray.
The first folder inside was labeled *NVL.*
I sat down on the floor and opened it.
By the time Shirley knocked on the study door an hour later, I had read every page twice.
"Breakfast is ready," she said through the door.
"I'm not hungry," I said.
A pause.
"What are you doing in there?"
I looked at the folder in my lap.
At the company registration documents.
The bank statements.
The second set of wire transfers — not three, as the preliminary scan had found, but nine.
Not forty-eight thousand dollars.
One hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars.
"Stella." Shirley's voice sharpened.
"That is Everett's private study.
You have no right to—"
"It's my house," I said.
Silence from the other side of the door.
I took out my phone and called Eleanor.
"I found the NVL file," I said when she answered.
"There are nine transfers, not three.
The total is a hundred and sixty-two thousand." I turned a page.
"And Eleanor — there's a second company.
Something called Harrow Gate Properties.
I've never heard of it.
But my signature is on the incorporation documents."
Eleanor's voice went very quiet.
May you like
"Don't touch anything else.
I'm sending someone over this afternoon."
