The Other Woman's Price
Chapter 06 - The Other Woman's Price
Celeste did not look like a villain in the storage room. She looked hot, uncomfortable, and frightened of somebody who wasn't present.
Clara disliked the observation. It made things less simple.
"You touched my child," she said. "You entered his bedroom and hid papers under his mattress. Before we talk about a cassette, we're going to talk about that."
Celeste folded her arms. "Dominic ordered me to plant the packet where you'd find it. He wanted you angry and off balance. There was a camera in the room; he expected he'd be able to use your reaction to suggest you were unstable."
"And you did it."
"Yes."
"You turned Nico's phone over while Noah was sick."
Celeste's eyes filled, though her voice stayed steady. "Yes. I knew he'd called before because you sounded afraid. He told me it was another small fever. I wanted him there with me. I was jealous, and I did a cruel thing. I can't make that sentence prettier."
Evelyn stepped between them, not dramatically, merely to reclaim the room. "If you have information concerning falsified records, you can provide it to investigators. You should have a lawyer of your own."
"I'm here because Dominic threatened to make me carry the blame for everything," Celeste replied. "He has the transfer records. I signed invoices I was told had been approved years before I arrived. I thought if I gave Clara something useful—"
"You would feel better?" Clara asked.
Celeste looked away. "Possibly."
Clara took the tape to the old playback machine Helen had stored on a shelf. It needed electricity, a working belt, and more patience than Clara had. Helen returned from downstairs and found an extension cord. After several attempts, the reels turned.
A woman's voice emerged, grainy and distant. Marianne Wynn. Clara caught her breath so sharply that Evelyn placed a hand near her elbow, without quite touching her.
"My name is Marianne Wynn. It's April fourteen. I have copies of four false invoices, each approved by Dominic Russo. I tried to give them to Teresa Valenti yesterday. Mr. Russo was waiting. He says if I make trouble, he'll tell the state I stole from the foundation. I don't think Teresa believes him, but I don't know if she can stop him. I have a daughter. I need somebody to know I didn't take the money."
The tape hissed for several seconds. Then another voice, Teresa's, older and stronger than Clara remembered from charity events years ago.
"Marianne, I believe you. I'm going to put this where the documents can't be altered. Whatever happens to the grant, your daughter will be taken care of. That's my promise."
Clara bent over the chest. She had forgotten the way her mother pronounced April, making it sound like a word with three syllables. She had spent the years since the funeral afraid she'd imagined that detail.
The recording continued: Teresa had requested an outside audit, but her husband had opposed public scrutiny while their businesses faced other investigations. She had held the evidence privately and used her personal funds to help several women affected by the missing grants. The recording did not prove that Nico had been selected as Clara's future husband. It proved something Celeste had been led to believe and was repeating without knowing whether it was true.
"You said Nico was chosen for me," Clara said after turning the machine off. "By whom?"
"Dominic claimed Teresa encouraged the marriage because your mother had material that could hurt him. I never saw any proof. I thought you'd want to know."
"My husband and I met at an auction for a children's library. Five years ago. He spilled coffee on a nineteenth-century atlas, and I told him he was an idiot. Nobody arranged that."
"Maybe not. Dominic keeps files on everybody. I can't tell what's real anymore."
Clara remembered laughing over the atlas, the expression on Nico's face when a woman who earned less in a month than he spent on flowers had told him exactly what she thought. If Dominic had watched that meeting later, he might have seen an opportunity. That was different from arranging their love.
Evelyn bagged the tape with Helen as witness and asked Celeste to write down the names of every company to which she'd approved payments. Celeste hesitated, then took a pen.
"And the man with you at the elevator?" Evelyn asked.
"A technician, paid through Russo Holdings. He was there to install an independent camera. I didn't know until afterward."
Clara felt suddenly cold. "Where?"
"In your husband's office. The cameras in the nursery were already part of the system. Dominic wanted recordings showing Clara losing control."
"Did he get them?"
"I don't know."
A motor sounded in the alley. Helen peered through the dusty window. A black SUV had pulled beside the service entrance. Clara recognized the license plate prefix used by Valenti security, though the vehicle itself was unfamiliar.
Celeste went white. "I told Dominic I'd be here alone."
Evelyn calmly dialed the police nonemergency line, described an apparent threat at the building, and asked for an officer. Helen opened an interior door leading down to the occupied printing shop. They descended together rather than separate. Clara made herself walk at an ordinary pace.
Outside, a man stood beside the SUV, tapping his phone. When he saw them through the shop window, he drove away without approaching. Helen recorded the plate number.
It could have been nothing. Clara was finished being persuaded by the word nothing.
Back at June's house, Noah woke rosy-cheeked and indignant, demanding a banana. Clara held him and listened to a voicemail from Nico that Evelyn had forwarded with her permission. He had left no plea to forgive him, only the precise temperature from the hospital report, the doctor's summary, and a statement that he would follow the attorney's instructions about contact.
She did not answer.
That evening, Evelyn called with one more discovery. The payments diverted from Harbor House had not simply purchased renovations that never happened. A large portion had been deposited into an account established for Noah after Teresa's death.
May you like
A child who was not yet two was now named in financial records tied to years of fraud. Clara thought of how he had held the yellow pencil that morning, fiercely proud of something that belonged only to him. His name was not a convenient label to put on an account.
And on the oldest transfer, the authorization belonged to somebody nobody expected: Clara's dead mother.
