Chapter 11: Ruth Calloway
She answered on the second ring, which told him she'd been expecting a call for a long time and had gotten into the habit of answering quickly.
"Ruth Calloway."
"My name is Thomas.
My wife was Eleanor."
A long pause.
"I've been waiting," Ruth said, "for eleven years."
She was in Edinburgh, as the note had said — still at the same address, a fact that struck Thomas as either loyalty or stubbornness, and he suspected it was both.
She spoke carefully and precisely, the way people speak when they have rehearsed something in their heads many times and are finally being given the chance to say it.
Eleanor had come to her eight months before she d*ed.
They had been friends since university — close friends, the kind who go years without speaking and then pick up exactly where they left off.
Eleanor had shown her the photocopied document and told her what Martin Hale had said about it.
"She didn't believe him," Ruth said.
"She told me she'd looked up the holding company and it didn't appear in any public register she could find.
She said it felt like something that had been constructed specifically to be hard to trace."
"Did she tell anyone else?"
"She was afraid to.
She didn't know who was involved.
She didn't know how far it went." A pause.
"She was also afraid that if she pushed too hard, something would happen.
She didn't say what.
She didn't have to."
Thomas was standing in the study, the door closed, Lily still asleep upstairs.
"You have a copy of the document."
"I have the copy she gave me, yes.
I also have two letters she sent me in the months after — she was building a record, I think.
Writing things down so that if something happened, there would be a trail."
"Can you send them to me?"
"I'll do better than that," Ruth said.
"I'll bring them.
I've been wanting to bring them for eleven years.
I just didn't know if you were someone who needed to know."
"I need to know."
"Yes," she said.
"I can hear that." Another pause.
"She told me something else.
In the last letter.
She said that if anything happened to her, the most important thing was Lily.
That whoever came into that house after her — she needed to be watched carefully.
She said she didn't trust Martin Hale's intentions and she didn't know what form they might take."
Thomas was very still.
"She knew," he said.
"She suspected.
She was trying to protect against a possibility she hoped would never happen." Ruth's voice was quiet.
"I'm sorry it happened."
"When can you come?"
"I can be there by tomorrow evening if I take the morning train."
"I'll send you the address."
"I have the address," she said.
"Eleanor gave it to me.
Along with everything else."
He ended the call and stood in the study for a moment with the phone in his hand.
Then he went to the kitchen and put the kettle on, because it was six in the morning and he had not slept and Patricia Osei's office opened in two hours.
Dolores came downstairs at half past six.
She looked at him, at the kettle, at the lockbox still on the table.
"You didn't sleep," she said.
"No."
"Did you reach her?"
"Yes.
She's coming tomorrow evening." He poured two cups.
"She has letters.
Eleanor was building a record."
Dolores sat down.
"Eleanor was always thorough."
"You knew her well."
"I knew her for six years before she d*ed.
She was—" Dolores wrapped her hands around the cup.
"She was the kind of person who noticed things.
Small things.
The kind of things most people walk past." She paused.
"Lily is like her."
Thomas looked at the ceiling — toward the floor above, toward the room where his daughter was sleeping.
"I know," he said.
At eight o'clock, he and Dolores were in Patricia Osei's office.
He put the envelope on her desk.
She read Eleanor's letter without expression, then read it again.
She looked at the photocopied document for a long time.
"Hale Meridian Holdings," she said.
"Yes."
"And Martin Hale told your wife this was a standard arrangement."
"Yes."
Patricia set the document down.
She took off her reading glasses and set them on the desk beside it.
"Mr.
Thomas," she said.
"This is no longer only a family law matter."
"I know."
"I have a colleague.
Forensic financial work, corporate fraud.
She's very good and she's very discreet.
With your permission, I'd like to bring her in."
"Yes."
"And the woman — Ms.
Hale — she needs to understand that the scope of what we're looking at has expanded significantly.
Her brother's involvement in your wife's discovery changes the nature of this considerably."
"She sent me a message last night," Thomas said.
"Telling me to ask Dolores what she was hiding.
She knew.
She knew that Dolores knew something."
Patricia looked at Dolores.
"Did she ever approach you directly?
Try to find out what you knew?"
"Twice," Dolores said.
"Once she went through my room.
I found things moved.
Once she asked me directly what Eleanor and I used to talk about.
I told her we talked about the household."
"And she believed you?"
"No," Dolores said.
"But she couldn't prove otherwise."
Patricia wrote for a long time.
Then she set her pen down.
"Here is what's going to happen," she said.
"The child welfare assessment is still the priority — Lily's safety comes first and it comes first in the legal record.
But alongside that, I'm opening a second line of inquiry.
We're going to find out what Hale Meridian Holdings is, who controls it, and how your name ended up on a contract you never signed."
Thomas nodded.
"And Ms.
Hale," Patricia said.
"She's going to receive a letter today.
Formal, legal, comprehensive.
She is going to understand, by the end of today, that the ground has shifted significantly beneath her."
"Good," Thomas said.
He stood to go.
At the door, he turned back.
"Patricia.
Is it possible — what happened to Eleanor.
Could it be—"
"I don't know," she said, before he could finish.
"But I know someone who can look at it.
If you want me to make that call."
May you like
Thomas looked at the envelope on her desk.
"Make the call," he said.
