Chapter 8: What Richard Said
The call came at two-seventeen in the afternoon.
We were still at the office.
Grace had stepped out.
Ellen was on her own call in the adjoining room.
My mom had gone to get coffee from the place on the corner and had been gone longer than expected.
Daniel's phone lit up on the table.
Richard Holt.
He looked at it.
Then at me.
"You don't have to answer," I said.
"Yes I do," he said.
"If I don't, he'll call again.
And again.
And eventually he'll show up somewhere."
He answered it on speaker, the way he had the night before.
"Daniel." Richard's voice was different now.
The controlled quality was still there, but underneath it something had changed.
Tighter.
"I know what you did this morning."
"All right," Daniel said.
"I want you to understand something.
That document — the annotations — those were exploratory notes.
They don't mean what you think they mean.
Any competent attorney will tell you that."
"Then you'll have a chance to explain that."
"I'm explaining it to you now.
I'm your father.
I'm asking you to listen to me."
"I'm listening."
A pause.
"You have no idea what it cost to build what we have.
The risks I took.
The years your mother and I spent with nothing, building something from nothing, so that you could have the life you had." His voice tightened.
"And you handed a private family document to investigators because a woman you've known for two years brought a piece of paper to a dinner."
"The document was mine," Daniel said.
"You gave it to me."
"I gave it to you in confidence."
"You gave it to me to sign.
I didn't sign it.
That was my decision to make."
"Daniel — "
"Sixty-three people, Dad." Daniel's voice stayed level.
"Some of them are retired.
Some of them have nothing left."
Silence.
"That is a gross oversimplification of a complex — "
"How much did Stuart Peel move last night?"
The silence this time was different.
"I don't know what you're referring to."
"Yes you do."
Another pause.
When Richard spoke again, the controlled voice had been replaced by something colder.
"You've made a very serious mistake.
I want you to understand that.
Not a threat — a fact.
What you've done today will follow you.
It will follow your career.
It will follow your name." He paused.
"It will follow her."
Daniel's hand tightened slightly under mine.
"Is that a threat?" he said.
"It's a reality.
I have relationships with people who — "
"Say it plainly," Daniel said.
"If you're threatening my fiancée, say it plainly so we're both clear on what you mean."
A long pause.
"I'm saying that actions have consequences," Richard said.
"For everyone involved."
"Yes," Daniel said.
"They do."
He ended the call.
The room was quiet for a moment.
"He threatened you," I said.
"He implied a threat.
He's too careful to make one directly." Daniel set the phone down.
"Grace needs to hear that recording."
"You recorded it?"
He turned the phone over.
A small red dot in the corner of the screen.
"Ellen told me to keep it running while we were here," he said.
"In case he called."
He picked up the office phone and dialed Grace's number.
---
Grace listened to the recording twice.
"The implication is clear enough," she said.
"It won't add to the fraud case directly, but it establishes his state of mind and it documents attempted intimidation of a cooperating witness." She looked at Daniel.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes," he said.
"He'll try again.
Probably through your mother."
"I know."
"Is there anything you need from us in terms of — "
"No," he said.
"I know what he's doing.
He's trying to make me feel responsible for what happens to him." He looked at the table.
"I've been watching him do that to other people my whole life.
I just never thought he'd do it to me."
My mom had come back.
She was standing in the doorway with two cups of coffee, having clearly heard the last part.
She crossed the room and set one cup in front of Daniel.
He looked up at her.
"He said it would follow her," he said quietly.
"That's what I keep coming back to."
"I know," she said.
"Men like that always reach for the person standing next to you.
It's the oldest move there is." She sat down.
"It didn't work thirty years ago when Gerald Marsh's father tried it on me.
It won't work now."
Daniel looked at her for a long moment.
"You've been through something like this before."
"Something like it."
"How did you come out the other side?"
She wrapped both hands around her coffee cup.
"I stopped trying to protect the wrong person," she said simply.
He nodded slowly.
His phone lit up again.
Not Richard this time.
Vivienne.
He looked at it until it stopped ringing.
It rang again immediately.
May you like
He picked it up.
"Mom," he said.
