Chapter 6 - THE VIDEOThe recording lasted eleven minutes.
The first four seemed meaningless.
Charles’s office.
Empty.
The security camera pointed toward his desk.
At 10:41 p.m., Charles entered.
The timestamp mattered immediately.
Mom’s crash had occurred at 10:03.
Charles wore dark pants and a gray sweater.
There was dirt across one sleeve.
He was holding his phone.
Thirty seconds later, Travis Boone entered.
I recognized him instantly from the hospital camera.
Boone looked agitated.
Charles closed the office door.
The video had audio.
Boone spoke first.
“You said scare her.”
Charles answered:
“I said solve the problem.”
Nobody in the interview room moved.
Boone paced.
“She went over the barrier.”
Charles poured himself a drink.
“Then she went over the barrier.”
My stomach turned.
Boone whispered something we couldn’t hear.
Charles replied:
“You’re getting paid. Stop panicking.”
Courtney covered her face.
I didn’t.
I watched every second.
Boone asked about the vehicle.
Charles told him it would be repaired.
Then sold.
Boone asked whether Margaret had spoken to police before the crash.
Charles said:
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
The recording ended with Charles handing Boone an envelope.
Cash.
Detective Ruiz paused the screen.
“This changes everything.”
My hands were ice cold.
“Is that enough?”
“It’s significant evidence of conspiracy and consciousness of guilt. We’ll still corroborate it.”
“Why did Courtney have this?”
Courtney looked at me.
“I installed the camera.”
“Why?”
“Because I stopped trusting him.”
The irony almost made me angry again.
“When?”
“Two months ago.”
“After you learned he was married?”
She flinched.
“Yes.”
Courtney explained that Charles had initially told her he was separated.
When she discovered I was pregnant and still living with him, she confronted him.
Charles convinced her that our marriage existed only on paper.
Then he began involving her in Northstar.
Small tasks.
Picking up documents.
Delivering envelopes.
Eventually Courtney realized something illegal was happening.
She placed a hidden camera inside Charles’s private office.
“I thought I’d catch proof he was moving money.”
“Instead you recorded him admitting involvement in my mother’s death.”
“I didn’t watch it until last week.”
“Why not go to police?”
“Because I was terrified.”
She looked down.
“And because part of me didn’t want to lose the life he promised.”
At least she admitted it.
Ruiz asked what happened at the rest stop.
Courtney said Charles called her after Martin died.
He knew Martin had spoken to her.
He ordered her to return.
She refused.
Minutes later, Boone appeared behind her on the highway.
She drove to a crowded rest stop.
Boone tried to pull her into another vehicle.
She fought him.
A truck driver approached and Boone fled.
Courtney left her car because she believed it was being tracked.
She spent the night hiding in a motel.
“Where’s Boone now?” I asked.
Ruiz answered.
“We’re looking.”
Charles was arrested again that evening.
This time, he did not walk out two hours later.
The charges began accumulating.
Conspiracy.
Fraud.
Forgery.
Financial crimes.
Obstruction.
Investigators also obtained a warrant for his office, phones, computers, and financial records.
What emerged over the next week was worse than any of us expected.
Northstar Residential Holdings had been used to move stolen assets for years.
Not only mine.
Other clients.
Other properties.
Martin Keller had helped forge signatures and create fake authorizations.
Charles recruited people who trusted him.
Widows.
Elderly clients.
Business partners.
He moved small amounts at first.
Then larger amounts once he understood their financial habits.
My marriage had not merely been dysfunctional.
I had been married to a professional thief.
Martin’s death, however, remained unexplained.
Police confirmed the body in the burned vehicle belonged to him.
The medical examiner determined he had died before the fire started.
He had been struck in the head.
Boone became the primary suspect.
Two weeks after my hospitalization, federal agents located Boone at a motel near the Canadian border.
He attempted to flee.
He did not succeed.
Under questioning, Boone denied killing anyone.
Then prosecutors showed him the office video.
His confidence collapsed.
Boone asked for an attorney.
The negotiation began.
Three days later, he agreed to cooperate.
In exchange for consideration at sentencing, he described what happened to Mom.
Charles had hired him to frighten her.
That was the original instruction.
Follow her.
Force her off the road if necessary.
Make her stop investigating.
But Boone claimed Charles later changed the instruction.
“Make sure she can’t keep talking.”
Boone followed Mom that night in Charles’s Range Rover.
Charles came with him.
When they caught up to her, Boone struck the back of her car.
Mom lost control.
Her vehicle broke through the barrier.
Charles made Boone stop long enough to verify the car had gone down the embankment.
Then they left.
My mother had been alive for almost eleven minutes after the crash.
Eleven minutes.
Emergency services didn’t receive a call until another driver noticed the broken barrier nearly twenty minutes later.
I sat in Robert’s office when Ruiz told me.
The room blurred.
“He could have called an ambulance.”
Ruiz didn’t answer.
“He could have saved her.”
Maybe.
Maybe not.
But the question would follow me forever.
Charles had watched.
Then left.
I went home that night and cried until morning.
Not dramatic crying.
No screaming.
No shattered glasses.
Just grief.
Quiet.
Exhausting.
Real.
At sunrise, my baby kicked hard enough to make me gasp.
I placed my palm over the movement.
For the first time, I realized I had spent weeks thinking only about what Charles had taken.
Mom.
Money.
Safety.
My marriage.
But something remained.
My daughter.
My future.
My mother’s house.
And myself.
Charles had failed to take those.
The following afternoon, Robert called.
“Emily, there’s something else.”
I almost laughed.
“There’s always something else.”
“The forensic accountant traced the missing trust funds.”
“Can we recover them?”
“Most of them.”
“Most?”
“Approximately $590,000.”
I exhaled.
“And the rest?”
“Spent.”
“On what?”
Robert hesitated.
“Courtney.”
That didn’t surprise me.
“Cars?”
“Jewelry. Travel. An apartment.”
I closed my eyes.
“Of course.”
“But there’s another transfer.”
My eyes opened.
“How much?”
“Four hundred thousand dollars.”
“That’s more than we knew was missing.”
“Yes.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Your mother’s personal investment account.”
I sat still.
“Who authorized it?”
“That’s the problem.”
Robert placed the document in front of me the next morning.
At the bottom was Margaret Baldwin’s signature.
My mother’s.
Dated three days after she died.
May you like
Someone had forged the signature of a dead woman.
And the witness on the authorization form was Courtney Vale.
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