Chapter 8: The Second Set
Diane read the message twice, then called Grace from the corridor.
The three of them met in a small conference room the court made available for attorney consultations.
Grace arrived in seven minutes with a junior colleague carrying a laptop.
"Second set of accounts," Grace said, sitting down.
"What do we know?"
"Nothing yet," Diane said.
"The message came from an unregistered number.
We can't identify the sender."
"Could be Coyle," Grace's colleague said.
"Coyle doesn't tip off opposing counsel," Grace said.
"He's too careful for that." She looked at Valerie.
"Who else knew you were at the hearing today?"
"Paula.
My head chef, who's covering the restaurant.
Thomas." Valerie paused.
"Carol."
Grace looked at her.
"Carol Marsh?"
"She knew about the hearing.
Diane told her when she came in for her statement."
Grace and Diane exchanged a look.
"Call her," Grace said.
Diane stepped out.
She was back in four minutes.
"No answer," she said.
"Voicemail."
Grace turned to her colleague.
"Pull everything we have on Daniel's financial structure.
Every account we've identified, every entity, every name attached to anything." She looked at Valerie.
"When we froze the operating account, we were working from the transfers we could trace.
If there's a second structure — a separate set of accounts we haven't identified — it means the four hundred and thirty thousand wasn't the whole picture."
"How much more could there be?" Valerie asked.
"That depends on how long he's been building it." Grace's voice was steady, but something behind her eyes had sharpened.
"And how careful he was."
The colleague turned the laptop around.
On the screen was a corporate registry search.
A company name Valerie didn't recognize — Halcyon Property Consulting Ltd — registered eighteen months ago.
Director listed as a name she also didn't recognize.
But the registered address was her restaurant.
Valerie looked at the screen.
"He used my building," she said.
"He used your address," Grace said.
"The company is registered to a nominee director — a common method for keeping the real owner's name off the public record.
But the address links it back to your business, which means any money flowing through that entity could be argued to involve your assets." She paused.
"It also means he may have been planning this for longer than eight months."
Valerie sat back.
Eighteen months ago.
The charity fundraiser photograph.
Sandra Voss.
Daniel's hand at the small of her back.
"He was already building the exit," Valerie said.
"It looks that way."
"While I was working.
While Thomas was in school." She looked at the company name on the screen.
"He was building the whole thing while we were just living our lives."
Nobody in the room said anything for a moment.
Then Grace's phone rang.
She answered, listened for thirty seconds, and stood up.
"Carol Marsh just walked into the district attorney's office," she said.
"She says she has something she didn't include in her statement.
She says she found it this morning and she drove straight in."
---
Carol was sitting in a waiting room chair with her coat still on and a small cardboard box on her lap when they arrived.
She looked up when Valerie walked in.
"I should have looked through everything sooner," Carol said.
"I thought I knew what was in the box.
I've had it for eleven years and I thought I knew every piece of paper in it." She looked down at the box.
"But I found this at the bottom, underneath everything else.
I don't know how I missed it."
Grace sat across from her.
"What is it?"
Carol opened the box and removed a single document — a printed page, slightly yellowed at the edges, with a handwritten note clipped to it.
"During our divorce proceedings, Daniel's lawyer submitted a financial disclosure.
Standard procedure." Carol set the document on the table.
"This is a copy of that disclosure.
I kept it because my own lawyer told me to keep everything." She pointed to a line near the bottom of the page.
"This account number.
I didn't know what it was at the time.
My lawyer said it was a dormant savings account with a negligible balance."
Grace leaned forward and looked at the number.
Her colleague typed it into the laptop.
The result came back in under a minute.
The account was not dormant.
It had never been dormant.
It had been opened fourteen years ago — two years before Daniel's first marriage to Carol — and it had been active continuously since then, under a name that was a slight variation of Daniel's own: D.R.
Marsh, rather than Daniel R.
Marsh.
Current balance: one million, two hundred and forty thousand dollars.
The room was very quiet.
"He's had it the whole time," Grace said.
"Since before he married me," Carol said.
"Since before any of this."
Grace looked at Valerie.
Valerie looked at the number on the screen.
One million, two hundred and forty thousand dollars.
Sitting in an account that had existed for fourteen years, that had survived one divorce, one remarriage, eight months of investigation, an arrest, and a bail hearing.
That had almost survived everything.
"The text message," Valerie said.
"Someone knew about this account."
"Someone who had access to Daniel's financial records," Grace said.
"Or someone he told."
Valerie looked at Carol.
Carol shook her head slowly.
"He never told me.
I found it by accident."
"Sandra Voss," Valerie said.
Grace picked up her phone.
"I need to bring her in," she said.
"Today."
She was already walking out of the room when Valerie's phone rang.
The screen showed a name she hadn't expected.
Daniel.
He was calling from a number she didn't recognize — not his usual phone, which had been seized.
A second phone.
One the police didn't have.
May you like
She looked at Grace's retreating back.
Then she answered.
