Chapter 7: The Man Named D
She called Patricia before she touched anything else.
"A note under my door," Elena said.
"Handwritten.
Signed with the initial D."
"Read it to me."
She did.
Patricia was quiet for a moment.
"Don't meet anyone you can't identify.
This could be Julian trying a different approach, or it could be someone connected to the Connecticut account who has their own reasons for wanting it exposed." Another pause.
"Or it could be nothing.
A hotel employee delivering the wrong note."
"It has my name on it."
"I know." Patricia's voice was careful.
"I want you to photograph it and send it to me.
Then I want you to go down to the front desk and ask if anyone saw who slid something under your door in the last two hours."
The front desk clerk — a young man named Theo, according to his badge — checked the corridor camera footage without being asked twice.
He turned the monitor toward Elena.
The footage showed a man in a grey jacket, medium height, face angled away from the camera.
He slid the note under the door at 11:52 a.m.
— while Elena had been in the business center, while Julian had been in the lobby.
"Do you know who that is?" Theo asked.
"No," Elena said.
But she had seen that grey jacket before.
In one of the surveillance photographs.
Standing near the entrance of the Back Bay restaurant.
She had assumed at the time he was a passerby.
She went back to her room and opened the encrypted USB drive on her laptop.
She found the photograph.
She enlarged it.
The man in the grey jacket was standing too close to the restaurant entrance to be a passerby.
He was watching Julian and Chloe's table.
She called the investigative agency in Boston.
"The surveillance photos from October fourteenth," she said when her contact, a quiet man named Garrett, picked up.
"There's a man in a grey jacket near the restaurant entrance.
He appears in at least one frame.
Did your team note him?"
A pause.
She heard keyboard clicks.
"Yes.
We flagged him internally but didn't include him in your report because we couldn't confirm relevance.
He was present at two of the four surveillance locations."
"Two."
"The restaurant and the boutique hotel.
He wasn't with your husband's party.
He appeared to be watching them independently."
Elena sat very still.
"Do you know who he is?"
"We ran the plates on a vehicle he entered after leaving the hotel location.
The registration came back to a man named Daniel Forsythe.
He's a former financial compliance officer.
He worked for a firm called Aldren Group until about fourteen months ago."
Elena wrote the name down.
"Garrett," she said.
"Did Julian ever work with Aldren Group?"
A longer pause this time.
"Mrs.
Voss.
Aldren Group is the parent company of Voss Capital Holdings."
The room was very quiet.
"Send me everything you have on Forsythe," she said.
She forwarded it all to Patricia the moment it arrived.
Patricia called back within twenty minutes.
"Daniel Forsythe was terminated from Aldren Group thirteen months ago," Patricia said.
"The termination was listed as 'restructuring' but there was a non-disclosure agreement attached.
My contact at the financial crimes unit says Forsythe filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC eight months ago.
The complaint is still under review."
"What was the complaint about?"
"Improper transfer of client funds through a series of holding accounts." Patricia paused.
"One of which, according to the complaint, is Voss Capital Holdings."
Elena set her hand flat on the desk.
"Julian isn't just hiding marital assets," she said.
"No," Patricia said.
"If Forsythe's complaint is accurate, Julian has been using that account to move money that doesn't belong to him at all." A beat.
May you like
"Elena.
This is no longer just a divorce case."
