Chapter 5: The Woman in the Orange Uniform
Her name was Rachel Donovan.
Detective Reyes confirmed it quietly to Gerald while paramedics checked Lily in a side room off the ballroom.
Forty-one years old.
Single mother.
Former accountant.
No prior crjminal record before the conviction eight months ago.
"What was she convicted of?" Victoria asked.
She had stayed.
Nobody had asked her to, and nobody had asked her to leave, so she stayed.
Gerald looked at her carefully.
"Wire fraud.
She was accused of embezzling from her employer."
"Accused by whom?"
"Alexander Hayes."
Victoria sat down on the nearest chair.
She set both hands flat on her knees and looked at the floor.
"He put her in prison," she said.
"Yes."
"And then he took her daughter."
"Lily disappeared four months after Rachel's conviction.
The official finding was a runaway.
Rachel maintained from inside prison that Lily would never run.
Nobody listened." Gerald paused.
"I listened."
"Why you?"
"Because Rachel's sister is my neighbor.
She came to me when the police closed the case.
I'm retired, but I still have contacts." He glanced toward the side room.
"Eleven months of contacts."
Victoria was quiet for a moment.
"He put that chest in my wedding," she said.
"He put a child in a chest and placed it at my altar and told me it was a family heirloom."
"Yes."
"He was going to marry me with that child ten feet away."
Gerald didn't answer.
The answer was already in the room.
Victoria stood up.
She walked to the door of the side room and knocked twice, softly.
A paramedic opened it.
Lily was sitting on a folding chair wrapped in a foil blanket.
Rachel sat beside her, still in the orange uniform, one arm around her daughter's shoulders.
A female officer stood near the wall, giving them space.
Victoria stepped inside.
Rachel looked up.
Her expression was guarded.
Exhausted.
The kind of exhausted that goes past the body.
"I didn't know," Victoria said.
"I need you to know that I didn't know."
Rachel studied her for a long moment.
"I believe you," she said finally.
"He's very good at making sure people don't know."
"Is she—" Victoria looked at Lily.
"Is she hurt?"
"Dehydrated," the paramedic said.
"Some bruising.
She'll need monitoring, but she's going to be fine."
Lily was watching Victoria with dark, steady eyes.
"He said nobody would come," Lily said.
Her voice was rough from disuse.
"He said my mom was a crjminal and nobody would believe her and nobody would look for me."
Victoria felt something move through her chest.
She didn't name it.
"He was wrong," she said.
Lily looked at her mother.
Rachel tightened her arm around her daughter's shoulders.
"He's wrong about a lot of things," Rachel said.
"But he's very good at making them sound true.
He did it to me for two years before I understood what was happening." She paused.
"How long were you with him?"
"Eight months," Victoria said.
Rachel nodded slowly.
"Then you got out early."
The ambulance arrived outside.
The paramedic moved to help Lily stand.
Victoria stepped back to make room.
As Rachel passed her in the doorway, she stopped.
"The chest," Rachel said quietly.
"He had it custom built.
I found the invoice on his computer eighteen months ago.
That's why he had me convicted.
I knew too much, and I had proof, and he needed me gone before I could use it."
Victoria stared at her.
"The invoice is still there," Rachel said.
"On a private server.
Gerald knows where."
She walked through the door and followed her daughter toward the ambulance.
Victoria stood in the empty side room for a moment.
Then she took out her phone and called her own attorney.
It rang twice.
"Margaret," she said, "I need you to find out everything Alexander Hayes owns.
Every account.
Every property.
May you like
Every company." A pause.
"Because in about forty-eight hours, none of it is going to be his anymore."
