Chapter 7: Cordelia's Move
Cordelia Sterling did not retain a separate attorney.
That was the first thing Sable noticed when the court acknowledged the amended complaint.
Cordelia was added to the same defense team as Garrick — represented by Prescott, who now had the unenviable task of managing two clients whose interests were beginning to diverge.
"She's letting him cover her," Sable told Marlowe.
"For now."
"Is that a problem?"
"It means she thinks Garrick will protect her.
It also means if Garrick decides to negotiate for himself, she's exposed." Sable set the court notice down.
"We wait.
Let them figure out they're not on the same side."
They didn't have to wait long.
Four days after the amended filing, Marlowe came home to find Cordelia Sterling sitting on the front step of her house.
Not in a car.
Not with an attorney.
Sitting on the step, in a gray coat, with her handbag in her lap, like a woman waiting for a bus.
Marlowe stopped on the path.
"I'm alone," Cordelia said.
"No one knows I'm here."
"Get up," Marlowe said.
"We're not doing this on my doorstep."
She unlocked the door and held it open.
Cordelia walked in without being invited further, stood in the hallway, and looked around at the house — the house she had always made clear she considered beneath her son's standard.
"Sit down," Marlowe said.
She did not offer tea.
Cordelia sat at the kitchen table.
Marlowe remained standing.
"I want to know what Frances told you," Cordelia said.
"No."
"Marlowe—"
"You don't get to use my name like we're having a conversation between equals," Marlowe said.
"You sat in that courtroom and said I didn't deserve a single penny.
You knew about Veltrane before it was filed.
You asked Garrick specifically to keep my name off it." She looked at her directly.
"So no.
You don't get to come here and ask me what I know."
Cordelia's jaw tightened.
"Frances is a disgruntled employee.
Whatever she told you—"
"She kept notes, Cordelia.
Dated notes.
With your words in them."
A silence.
"I was trying to protect my son," Cordelia said.
Her voice had shifted — less cold now, and Marlowe didn't trust that either.
"From what?"
"From a divorce that would have cost him everything he'd built."
"He built it with me," Marlowe said.
"Fourteen years.
I was there for every meeting, every move, every decision he second-guessed at two in the morning.
I was there." Her voice stayed level.
"And when he decided he wanted someone else, you helped him make sure I left with nothing."
Cordelia looked at the table.
"I didn't know about the signature," she said quietly.
"Which signature?"
"The forged one." She looked up.
"I knew about the transfer.
I did not know he had forged your signature to execute it.
That was not something I agreed to."
Marlowe studied her face.
"If that's true," Marlowe said slowly, "then you're here because you're afraid the DA's office is going to include you in a fraud charge."
Cordelia said nothing.
Which was its own answer.
"You want to separate yourself from the forgery," Marlowe said.
"You want to draw a line between what you knew and what Garrick actually did."
"I'm telling you the truth."
"You're telling me the part of the truth that protects you."
Cordelia's hands tightened on her handbag.
For a moment she looked less like the woman who had presided over fourteen years of cold authority and more like what she actually was — a seventy-three-year-old woman who had helped her son do something that had gone further than she'd intended, and who was now sitting in the kitchen of the woman she'd wronged, hoping for a way out.
Marlowe looked at her for a long time.
"Go home, Cordelia," she said.
"Talk to your attorney.
Not to me."
"If you add my name to the fraud referral—"
"I didn't add your name to anything.
The DA's office will make their own determinations." Marlowe walked to the hallway and opened the front door.
"That's not my decision anymore.
You made sure of that when you helped him plan it."
Cordelia stood.
She walked to the door.
She stopped just before the threshold.
"For what it's worth," she said, without turning around, "I did think you were too good for him.
I simply thought that was a reason to let him go, not a reason to reward you for it."
She walked out.
Marlowe closed the door.
May you like
She stood in the hallway, alone, and pressed her back against the door.
Then she called Sable and told her everything Cordelia had said.
