Chapter 7: What Janet Marsh Knew
Janet Marsh met me at a coffee shop two blocks from Grace's office.
She was in her early sixties, silver-haired, with the kind of unhurried manner that made you feel she had already thought of everything you were about to say.
She ordered black coffee.
She waited until the server walked away.
Then she said, "I represented Richard's first business partner.
A man named Owen Calloway.
Seven years ago."
I set my cup down.
"I didn't know Richard had a first business partner."
"Most people don't," Janet said.
"That's rather the point."
Owen Calloway had invested two hundred and forty thousand dollars into Richard's first company — a logistics firm that Richard had told everyone he built alone from nothing.
The partnership lasted eighteen months.
Then Richard restructured the company, diluted Owen's shares through a series of internal transfers that Owen's own accountant hadn't caught until it was nearly too late, and Owen walked away with eleven thousand dollars and a non-disclosure agreement.
"Owen signed the NDA," Janet said.
"He was exhausted and he needed the money.
But he kept every document."
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
"Because I was in that auditorium last night," she said.
"I was there because my nephew is in your daughter's class.
And I watched a seven-year-old girl tell two hundred people the truth about her father." She looked at me directly.
"I've been waiting seven years for an opportunity to be useful to someone Richard Hale had wronged.
Last night I realized that person was sitting alone in the corner of the room."
My hands were still around my coffee cup.
"Owen would speak to your attorney," Janet said.
"He's been waiting for the NDA to be tested.
It was signed under duress — he has a case for it being unenforceable.
But more importantly, the financial records from that restructure show a pattern." She slid a business card across the table.
"The same pattern your attorney may find if she looks at how Richard has been managing your household accounts."
I picked up the card.
"He's been moving money," I said.
It wasn't a question.
Something had been sitting at the edge of my thoughts since Grace mentioned the asset freeze — how fast it had happened, how prepared it had felt.
"I don't know that for certain," Janet said.
"But Owen's restructure didn't happen overnight.
Richard plans.
He prepares exit strategies before anyone knows there's an exit being considered." She wrapped both hands around her cup.
"How long have you been planning to leave?"
"Three years," I said.
"Then he may have had three years to prepare as well."
The coffee shop was warm.
Outside the window, people walked past in coats, heads down against the wind.
"If he's been moving assets," I said slowly, "Grace needs to know today."
"Yes," Janet said.
"She does."
I was already reaching for my phone.
"Carol." Janet's voice was quiet.
"He told you divorce would be terrible for his reputation.
He said that to keep you in place.
But a man who says that is also a man who has been thinking about what divorce would cost him — and making sure it costs him as little as possible."
I looked at her.
"He's had a plan," she said.
"You need to make sure yours is better."
I called Grace from the pavement outside.
She picked up on the second ring.
"I need you to look at the household accounts," I said.
"All of them.
Every transfer in the last three years."
A pause.
"What did you find?"
May you like
"A pattern," I said.
"And a witness."
