“Then why the locksmith?”
No answer.
I stepped closer.
“You weren’t preserving records.”
Silence.
“You were looking for something.”
His eyes shifted.
There.
A tiny movement.
But enough.
I whispered:
“What were you trying to find?”
He grabbed his jacket.
“This conversation is over.”
“Not remotely.”
“I’m sleeping at my mother’s.”
I stared at him.
“Of course you are.”
He paused at the door.
“For what it’s worth, I never wanted you to get hurt.”
I laughed.
A cold, exhausted sound.
“Blake, people only say that after deciding the thing they wanted mattered more than the person they hurt.”
He left.
I locked the door behind him.
Then I went into our bedroom and opened the bottom drawer of his nightstand.
I wasn’t proud of it.
But trust had officially left the marriage before he had.
Inside were cufflinks.
Old receipts.
A passport sleeve.
A charging cable.
Nothing.
I checked the closet.
His desk.
The small safe.
Empty.
Then I noticed something strange.
One of the framed photographs on his office shelf was crooked.
Blake hated crooked things.
I lifted it.
Behind the frame was a folded piece of paper.
A bank receipt.
Three months old.
A wire transfer confirmation.
$240,000.
Sender:
NORTHSTAR STRATEGIC ADVISORY LLC.
Recipient:
B. CARTER CONSULTING.
I stared at the amount.
Then the sender.
I had never heard of Northstar.
But below the corporate name was a mailing address.
77 Mercer Street.
Floor 14.
I knew that address.
Belle & Vale’s corporate legal department used Floor 12.
And the executive offices occupied Floor 15.
Northstar was inside the same building.
I took a picture.
Then another.
My heart began pounding.
Because Blake had spent months insisting his consulting income had fallen.
He had delayed paying estimated taxes.
Complained about expenses.
Even asked me to cover a larger portion of our mortgage temporarily.
Yet three months earlier, someone inside Belle & Vale’s corporate building had wired him nearly a quarter of a million dollars.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then answered.
“Hello?”
A woman said:
“Natalie Carter?”
“Yes.”
“This is Sofia Alvarez.”
My stomach tightened.
“I need to speak with you tomorrow morning.”
“Am I allowed to ask whether I need a lawyer?”
“You are allowed to ask anything.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
She paused.
Then said:
“If I were you, I would bring one.”
My lawyer’s name was Daniel Cho.
He had represented Belle & Vale employees in a wage-classification dispute years earlier, which meant corporate legal disliked him.
That was one reason I called him.
The second was that he was incapable of pretending bad news was good news.
After I showed him the wire transfer, he leaned back.
“This changes nothing.”
I stared.
“Nothing?”
“Yet.”
“Blake received two hundred forty thousand dollars from a company operating inside Belle & Vale headquarters.”
“Yes.”
“And that changes nothing?”
“It creates a question. Questions are not evidence.”
“You’re irritating.”
“That’s what you’re paying me for.”
“I haven’t agreed to your fee.”
“You will.”
At nine thirty, Sofia brought us into a conference room at corporate headquarters.
Martin was not there.
That bothered me immediately.
Sofia sat opposite us with two investigators.
She placed a folder on the table.
“Natalie, we found eighteen vendor-credit transactions authorized through your credentials.”
“I know.”
“Total value: one million eight hundred twelve thousand six hundred forty dollars.”
Daniel glanced at me but said nothing.
Sofia continued.
“Eleven of those transactions occurred while you were physically logged into the flagship network.”
“That doesn’t mean I approved them.”
“The authentication token was attached to your account.”
“What kind of token?”
“Executive vendor authorization.”
I frowned.
“I don’t have executive vendor authorization.”
Sofia slid a page across the table.
There was my signature.
Dated eighteen months earlier.
A form titled:
EXPANDED OPERATIONAL AUTHORITY — FLAGSHIP MANAGEMENT.
I remembered signing it.
Martin had presented it after the flagship renovation.
It allowed me to approve emergency vendor payments up to certain thresholds.
At the time, he had described it as administrative cleanup.
My chest tightened.
“Who requested this?”
Sofia looked at me.
“Martin Vale.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“And who administered the credential?”
“Executive finance.”
“Who specifically?”
Sofia hesitated.
“That’s part of the investigation.”
Daniel sat back.
Interesting.
I looked at the authorization logs.
Several transactions occurred at strange times.
Tuesday mornings.
Thursday afternoons.
During store hours.
Exactly when I would be too busy to remember individual system prompts.
Then I saw one date.
February 17.
I tapped it.
“This one is impossible.”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t in New York.”
Sofia opened another file.
“You attended the Paris buying conference.”
“Yes.”
“The login originated from the flagship.”
“Then it wasn’t me.”
Sofia’s face gave away nothing.
“Someone could have used your terminal.”
“My office was locked.”
“Who had keys?”
“Facilities. Security. Mara had an emergency set.”
“Your husband?”
“No.”
Then I remembered.
Blake had once borrowed my office during a renovation committee meeting.
Only once.
Or so I thought.
Daniel slid the wire transfer photo toward Sofia.
“Have you heard of Northstar Strategic Advisory?”
For the first time, her expression changed.
Barely.
But I saw it.
Sofia knew the name.
She looked at Daniel.
“Where did you get this?”
“My client found it among shared marital property.”
“It was in my husband’s office.”
Sofia stared at the photograph.
Then closed the folder.
“This meeting is over.”
Daniel smiled without humor.
“That was fast.”
“I need to verify something.”
“Is Northstar connected to Belle & Vale?”
“I can’t discuss an active investigation.”
“Does Martin Vale own Northstar?”
She stood.
“I said the meeting is over.”
Outside the building, Daniel stopped on the sidewalk.
“Did you see that?”
“Yes.”
“She knew.”
“Yes.”
He looked up at Belle & Vale’s glass tower.
“So now we have a better question.”
“What?”
“Why is the chief compliance officer frightened by the name of a company that paid your husband?”
I looked toward the fifteenth floor.
Martin’s office.
The man who had defended me over speakerphone.
The man who had personally expanded my signing authority.
And for the first time, a thought entered my mind that I did not want there.
