Chapter 7 - Laura’s Last Day
Detective Brooks treated Sofia’s apartment as a crime scene.
Sofia treated it as a violation.
Someone had opened her underwear drawer.
Broken a framed photograph of her parents.
Dumped flour across the kitchen floor.
“They wanted me frightened,” she said.
Brooks shook her head.
“They wanted something.”
“The card.”
Michael stood near the broken door.
“What exactly was in it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You kept it for seven months and never read it?”
“It looked like a thank-you note.”
Brooks asked, “Did Laura Hayes say anything unusual the last time you saw her?”
Sofia closed her eyes.
April seventeenth.
Laura had been eight months pregnant.
Rain on the restaurant windows.
A man waiting at table six.
Laura sitting at table twelve instead.
“She was scared.”
Michael’s face tightened.
“Scared of what?”
“She kept watching the entrance.”
“Did she meet anyone?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Sofia concentrated.
“Not Grant.”
Michael leaned closer.
“Then who?”
“I don’t know his name. Older. Maybe sixty. Gray hair. Expensive watch.”
Michael pulled up photographs on his phone.
Board members.
Executives.
Attorneys.
Sofia stopped at one.
“That man.”
Michael stared.
“Robert Kellerman.”
“Who is he?”
“Our chief financial officer.”
Detective Brooks wrote it down.
Michael called him immediately.
Kellerman answered.
“Michael?”
“Did you meet Laura at Glasswater on April seventeenth?”
Silence.
Michael’s voice hardened.
“Robert.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I can explain.”
“Do it.”
“Not by phone.”
They met at Eleanor Price’s office.
Kellerman looked twenty years older than his company photograph.
“I should have told you.”
Michael stood across the table.
“My wife came to you the day before she died.”
“She asked me to investigate vendor payments.”
“Blue Heron?”
Kellerman’s silence confirmed it.
“How much?”
“Eleven point eight million dollars over three years.”
Michael stared.
“To what?”
“Consulting agreements. Development assessments. Acquisition research.”
“Did they perform the work?”
“I couldn’t verify it.”
“And you said nothing?”
Kellerman rubbed his forehead.
“Laura asked me not to until she had proof.”
“She died.”
“I know.”
“And then?”
“Grant told me she’d been confused because of the pregnancy.”
Michael slammed his palm against the table.
“My wife was not confused.”
Kellerman flinched.
“He showed me an email from her saying she had made a mistake.”
“Did you verify the email?”
“No.”
Michael laughed bitterly.
“My entire company runs on people not verifying what Grant tells them.”
Kellerman slid a flash drive across the table.
“I kept the payment history.”
Sofia looked at him.
“Why now?”
“Because a baby went into a river.”
Kellerman could not meet her eyes.
He continued.
“Blue Heron’s payments ultimately moved through three limited-liability companies.”
“To whom?”
“One is Natalie’s.”
Michael already knew that.
“And the others?”
Kellerman swallowed.
“One belongs to a board member named Charles Wynn.”
Michael cursed.
“And the last?”
“Grant’s former college roommate.”
The conspiracy widened.
Not one man.
Not one woman.
A network.
Sofia asked, “What was Laura trying to prove?”
Kellerman looked at Michael.
“That Grant was secretly financing an acquisition of Hayes Meridian shares through nominees.”
Michael understood immediately.
“He was buying control.”
“Yes.”
“And my father’s sixteen percent would finish it.”
“Yes.”
Sofia’s phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A photograph appeared.
Owen Park leaving school.
Under it were six words.
TELL THE BOY TO FORGET EVERYTHING.
Sofia showed Brooks.
Michael’s face drained.
The threat had moved from Sofia to an eleven-year-old witness.
May you like
And this time, whoever sent it had made one thing clear.
They knew exactly where Owen was.
