Chapter 7 - THIRTY-TWO NAMES
Police entered through the secured service corridor.
Guests were not prisoners.
The lockdown was an emergency safety protocol, and officers immediately began controlled release after identifying witnesses and preserving the scene.
Preston screamed anyway.
“This is kidnapping!”
Detective Mara Chen looked at him.
“No. This is a crime scene.”
He turned toward me.
“You did this.”
I held gauze against my lip.
“No. You did.”
Naomi woke in the library.
She remembered Preston pulling her through the hidden door.
Then someone covered her mouth.
“Was it him?” Chen asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Male? Female?”
“Male.”
“Preston?”
“I couldn’t see.”
That mattered.
We could not pretend certainty.
The metal case mattered more.
Thirty-two names.
Some we knew.
Most we did not.
Beside several were coded notes.
Paid.
Moved.
Discredited.
One said HOSPITAL.
Another said IMMIGRATION.
Another said HUSBAND INFORMED.
Then I saw a name I recognized.
Lydia Arden.
My mother.
I stopped breathing.
My father took the paper from my hand.
His face went white.
“No.”
“Dad?”
He stared at the name.
My mother had died sixteen years earlier.
Officially, after a long struggle with depression and prescription medication.
Before she died, she had worked as an accountant.
For one of Martin Vale’s companies.
I knew that.
What I did not know was why she left.
Dad sat down.
“She reported something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“You knew she had a problem with Vale?”
“She told me there were bad numbers. Offshore payments. I begged her to leave the job.”
“And then?”
“She did.”
He swallowed.
“Then somebody sent her employer medical records. Rumors started. She lost consulting clients.”
My chest tightened.
“You thought it was random?”
“I thought she had made enemies.”
“She had.”
I looked at Martin Vale across the ballroom.
He was speaking to his attorney.
Calm.
Still calm.
Then Detective Chen opened another folder from the case.
Inside was an old photograph of my mother leaving a psychiatrist’s office.
Stamped with a date.
Two weeks before the first anonymous attack on her reputation.
On the back, someone had written:
ARDEN WOMAN — pressure through husband if necessary.
Dad read it.
May you like
Then he looked at me.
For the first time in my life, I saw my father cry in public.
