Chapter 7: Forty-Seven Pages
Arthur Finch was exactly what his voice suggested — a man in his late sixties, unhurried, with the kind of stillness that comes from decades of watching people carefully.
He carried a worn leather satchel and ordered nothing from the hotel bar except water.
He set the satchel on the table between us and opened it.
"I'll summarize," he said, "and then you can read it yourself.
All of it."
"Summarize," I said.
"Victoria Prescott has done this before." He placed a photograph on the table.
A man I didn't recognize — late forties, well-dressed, the kind of face that suggested boardrooms and golf courses.
"His name is Thomas Waverly.
Pharmaceutical executive, Seattle.
She was engaged to him for eleven months, four years before she met you.
During that time she positioned herself as a stakeholder in two of his subsidiary companies through shell entities.
When the engagement ended — and it ended because he found out — she walked away with just under four million dollars in shares that had already vested."
Grace leaned forward slightly.
"He didn't pursue legal action?" I asked.
"He tried.
She had documentation suggesting he'd been aware of her stake and had verbally approved it.
His word against hers.
He settled quietly because a public fight would have damaged his company's stock price more than the loss did." Finch placed a second photograph on the table.
"This is the attorney who structured both the Waverly deal and Vantage Meridian.
His name is Conrad Reiss.
He's been her personal attorney for six years.
He's very good at making financial arrangements look like coincidences."
"And my father," I said.
"What did he find?"
Finch looked at me steadily.
"Your father ran a background check on Victoria nine months before he passed.
He found the Waverly connection.
He confronted her privately — he didn't want to damage your relationship without giving her a chance to explain.
She denied everything and told him he was a suspicious old man who couldn't accept that his son had found happiness." A pause.
"Two weeks later your father fell down the stairs at his home and fractured his hip.
He was seventy-one and he lived alone.
He told Gerald Marsh he didn't think it was an accident.
He couldn't prove it."
The air went out of the room.
"He never told me any of this," I said.
"He was afraid you wouldn't believe him.
And he was afraid of what she might do if she knew he'd spoken." Finch folded his hands on the table.
"He hired me instead.
He wanted documentation.
He wanted something that could stand up without him in the room."
Grace reached across the table and put her hand briefly over mine.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.
"The merger," I said.
"She knows the timeline.
She knows when it closes."
"In eleven days," Finch confirmed.
"Which is why she moved against Grace this morning.
She needed Grace discredited or gone before the closing, in case Grace had documentation that could complicate your legal standing or your mental competency in the eyes of the board."
"She called my board chair this morning."
"I know.
I was outside the house when she made the call." He reached into the satchel and produced a small digital recorder.
"I recorded it from the street.
The windows were open."
He pressed play.
Victoria's voice filled the small corner of the hotel bar, clear and precise and utterly composed, telling Richard Holt that she was worried about me, that I had been drinking, that she had heard things in my calls that concerned her, that she hoped the board would be watching carefully as the merger approached.
Every word a careful, deliberate brick in a wall she had been building around me.
When it ended, Finch stopped the recorder.
"She's going to come back to the house tonight," he said.
"And when she finds you gone, she'll move to the next stage.
I don't know exactly what that is.
But I know she has one."
I looked at Grace.
May you like
Grace looked at me.
"Then we move first," I said.
