Chapter 9 - THE VISIT
David looked ten years older behind glass.
The county detention center had taken his watch, his tailored jackets, his shoes, his phone, and the small rituals he used to make himself look untouchable.
He wore a plain detention uniform.
His hair had grown uneven around the ears.
There were dark circles beneath his eyes.
For one dangerous second, I remembered the young man I married.
Then he picked up the telephone and said, "You look tired."
The old control returned instantly.
Not How are you.
Not I'm sorry.
An observation designed to put me beneath him.
I picked up my receiver.
"You said you had information about Lily."
His face tightened.
"No hello?"
"Lily."
"Maya, I know you hate me."
"Lily."
He looked toward the camera in the corner.
He knew the conversation was recorded.
Good.
"I didn't know she was going to die."
My hand tightened around the receiver.
"Richard told you."
"Richard exaggerates to protect himself."
"The hospital recording exists."
"I was told she was sick."
"Critically ill."
He looked away.
"I had business to finish."
"Nine million dollars."
His jaw clenched.
"You don't understand those accounts."
There it was.
The sentence Arthur had warned me about.
I almost smiled.
"I understand enough."
"No, you understand what federal agents want you to understand."
"Then explain it."
He leaned toward the glass.
"The foundation owed Vance Meridian for years of administrative support."
"Twelve million dollars for a yacht?"
A flash of anger crossed his face.
"The vessel was an investment asset."
"You took Julianne on an investment asset while Lily died."
"Do not reduce this to that woman."
I stared at him.
"You reduced our daughter to a trust event."
His face went still.
For once, the accusation reached him.
Or perhaps he simply understood how it sounded on a recording.
"I loved Lily."
My throat burned.
"Then why didn't you come home?"
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Then tried another direction.
"Because I thought she would recover."
"You recorded yourself the next morning saying she was already gone."
His eyes changed.
He had not known I had seen the video.
"They showed you that?"
"Yes."
"Out of context."
"What context makes it better?"
He rubbed one hand over his face.
"I was in shock."
"You were preparing to frame me."
"I was protecting the company."
"From the mother of your dead child?"
"From chaos."
I almost laughed.
David always renamed people when they became inconvenient.
I was anxiety.
Lily was the child.
Fraud was administration.
Grief was chaos.
"Tell me what you know about Lily's last day."
He stared at me.
"Promise me something first."
"No."
"You don't even know what I'm asking."
"It doesn't matter."
His mouth tightened.
"Drop the divorce filing until the criminal case is resolved."
I nearly hung up.
He saw it.
"Wait."
I held the receiver away from my ear.
"Maya, wait."
I brought it back slowly.
"You have sixty seconds."
"Someone visited Lily at the hospital before you got there."
My body went still.
"What?"
"That morning."
"I was with her from admission."
"Before the ICU transfer."
I searched my memory.
The emergency department had been chaos.
I had left for perhaps fifteen minutes to complete paperwork and call Claire.
A nurse stayed with Lily.
"Who?"
"Richard."
I stared at him.
"Why would Richard visit my daughter?"
David leaned closer.
"Because he needed her wristband."
I stopped breathing.
"What are you talking about?"
"The catastrophic fund request required a patient identifier."
Nausea rose instantly.
"He used Lily's hospital wristband?"
"He photographed it."
"You ordered him to?"
David hesitated.
That was answer enough.
"You sent your CFO into a hospital room to photograph our sick daughter's medical ID so you could move money."
"It wasn't like that."
"What was it like?"
"The transfer was already planned."
"And you used her illness."
"The emergency provisions required documentation."
"So you used your daughter as documentation."
David looked down.
For the first time, he seemed unable to rename the act.
I forced myself to continue.
"Did Richard touch her?"
"What?"
"Did he do anything to her medically?"
"No."
His answer came fast.
"Absolutely not."
"How do you know?"
"Because that was never part of anything."
"You expect me to trust that?"
"Maya, I may have made mistakes, but I would never hurt Lily."
I stared at him through the glass.
"You hurt her when she asked for you and you did not come."
His eyes filled.
Whether the tears were real did not matter anymore.
"She asked for me?"
I almost hated myself for answering.
"Yes."
His face broke.
"What did she say?"
I could have punished him.
I could have told him nothing.
But Lily's last words belonged to truth, not revenge.
"She asked if you were coming."
David pressed his forehead to the glass.
"What did you tell her?"
My voice cracked.
"I told her you were trying."
He began to cry.
Quietly.
For one second, I saw a father.
Then he whispered, "Thank you."
Anger returned like fire.
"Do not thank me for lying to our daughter to protect you."
He flinched.
"I didn't mean—"
"You have thirty seconds."
He wiped his face.
"Richard kept the photo."
"Of the wristband?"
"Yes."
"Why does that matter?"
"Because the metadata proves when he was there."
"And?"
David looked toward the camera again.
"It proves I wasn't the only one responsible for the transfer."
There it was.
Even Lily's hospital wristband was not about Lily to him.
It was leverage against Richard.
I set the receiver down.
David lifted his free hand.
"Maya!"
I stood.
His voice came faintly through the glass.
"Maya, there is more!"
I turned back.
He pressed the receiver to his ear.
I picked mine up one last time.
"What?"
"Peter Sloan is lying."
My skin prickled.
"About what?"
"Arthur's letter."
"Why?"
"Because Arthur never trusted him enough to leave only one copy."
I said nothing.
David's eyes locked on mine.
"There is another copy inside the mansion."
"Where?"
He almost smiled.
For the first time in the meeting, he believed he had something I needed.
"Drop the divorce petition."
I hung up.
He slammed his palm against the glass.
I walked out.
Rachel was waiting in the hallway.
So was Agent Hale.
"He says there's another copy of Arthur's file in the mansion," I told them.
Hale's expression sharpened.
"Where?"
"He tried to trade the location for the divorce."
Rachel smiled without humor.
"That sounds like David."
Hale pulled out his phone.
"We'll search again."
I shook my head.
"You already searched the study."
"We searched every room covered by the warrant."
"Then it's somewhere he thought no one would connect to him."
A memory surfaced.
David hated clutter.
He hated toys in common rooms.
He hated anything he did not control.
Except one place.
Lily's playhouse in the back garden.
He had built it himself for her fifth birthday.
At least that was what I believed.
I suddenly remembered him disappearing inside it one night with a toolbox long after Lily had gone to bed.
"The playhouse."
Hale looked at me.
"What?"
"Check Lily's playhouse."
They found the compartment beneath the floorboards forty minutes later.
Inside was a metal box.
Inside the box were copies of Arthur's audit, three original notarized documents, and a handwritten ledger.
But that was not what made Agent Hale call me back immediately.
At the bottom of the box was a sealed envelope in David's handwriting.
It was addressed to Julianne.
The date on the front was six weeks before the Bahamas trip.
And across the bottom, David had written four words.
May you like
AFTER MAYA IS GONE.
