Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN IN THE CREAM COAT
Claire did not go alone.
She simply made Vanessa believe she had.
Noah sat three tables away in the hotel café.
A retired federal investigator he trusted waited in the lobby.
Vanessa arrived ten minutes late.
Cream coat.
Same as the airport.
Up close she looked tired rather than glamorous.
Claire hated that.
Hatred preferred monsters.
Vanessa looked human.
“Thank you for coming.”
Claire said nothing.
Vanessa sat.
“You probably want to hit me.”
“No.”
Vanessa blinked.
“I want you to talk.”
“That may be worse.”
“Good.”
Vanessa ordered nothing.
Claire looked at her hands.
No wedding ring.
“Where is Daniel?”
“Safe.”
“From me?”
“From everyone.”
“Why contact me?”
“Because Daniel is going to run again.”
Claire almost laughed.
“Let him.”
“He can't.”
“Why?”
“Because this time your name goes down with his.”
Vanessa slid a flash drive across the table.
Claire did not touch it.
“What is it?”
“Account records.”
“You expect me to trust a USB drive from the woman who slept with my husband?”
“I was sleeping with him before he became your dead husband.”
“Thank you for the clarification.”
Vanessa flinched.
Good.
“Why did Daniel fake his death?”
“You know the surface version.”
“I want yours.”
Vanessa looked toward the window.
Thomas Bell had recruited her straight out of business school.
She became his internal fixer.
She learned how shell companies worked.
How beneficial owners were hidden.
How regulators were delayed.
How money disappeared legally long enough to become almost impossible to trace.
Daniel noticed her.
The affair began fourteen months before the boat explosion.
Vanessa became pregnant.
“When did Daniel decide to leave me?”
“He didn't.”
Claire stared.
“He intended to keep both lives.”
The cruelty almost made Claire laugh.
“Of course he did.”
“Then the subpoena arrived.”
Bell panicked.
Daniel panicked more.
Vanessa proposed the staged death.
Claire's jaw tightened.
“So Margaret was right.”
“Yes.”
“You designed it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I loved him.”
Claire laughed.
Vanessa accepted it.
“I know how that sounds.”
“No. You don't.”
“I was thirty. Pregnant. Terrified.”
“And I was thirty-three and burying an empty coffin.”
Vanessa looked down.
“There is no explanation that makes it acceptable.”
At least she understood that.
“Why use my name on the accounts?”
“I didn't.”
Claire's expression hardened.
“Don't.”
“I moved money. I hid money. I helped fake the death. But I never put your name on Northstar.”
“Who did?”
“Bell.”
“Why?”
“Leverage.”
Against Daniel.
If Daniel betrayed Bell, the paper trail pointed toward Claire.
Daniel would know exposing Bell could imprison the wife he claimed to still care about.
Claire felt sick.
“He let Bell do it.”
“Yes.”
“Then he chose himself anyway.”
“Yes.”
No defense.
Again.
Claire looked at the flash drive.
“And the red file?”
“Daniel took copies proving Bell ordered the forgeries.”
“Where is it?”
“I don't know.”
“Your message said—”
“I said if you want it.”
Not that she had it.
Claire almost stood.
Vanessa leaned forward.
“Daniel hid it somewhere connected to you.”
“Why?”
“He said nobody understood your habits except him.”
Claire hated the intimacy of that sentence.
“What habits?”
“I don't know.”
Vanessa looked frightened now.
“Claire, Bell is dead.”
“I know.”
“No. You don't understand.”
She lowered her voice.
“Thomas Bell died six months after Daniel disappeared, but someone continued issuing instructions under his authorization codes.”
Claire froze.
“Who?”
“That is what I've spent four years trying to determine.”
“So your mastermind died.”
“Yes.”
“And the scheme continued.”
“Yes.”
“Who signs the transfers?”
Vanessa hesitated.
“Margaret.”
Claire went cold.
“Daniel's mother?”
“She claims she signs what lawyers give her.”
“Do you believe her?”
“No.”
Claire thought of Margaret at the church.
Daniel doesn't control this.
Maybe Margaret's confession had been carefully incomplete.
Vanessa continued.
“Tomorrow morning, another eleven million dollars is scheduled to move.”
“From where?”
“Bennett Capital's legacy trust.”
“To whom?”
Vanessa looked directly at Claire.
“You.”
Claire stopped breathing.
“I don't have an account.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No.”
Vanessa pushed a document across the table.
A bank account in Switzerland.
Beneficial owner:
Claire Elizabeth Bennett.
Balance:
$26,408,114.
Claire stared.
Vanessa whispered:
“If that money moves tomorrow, federal investigators won't see you as Daniel's widow anymore.”
“What will they see?”
May you like
Vanessa answered:
“His partner.”
