Chapter 6 - DANIEL VALE
Daniel Vale answered the video call from a marina in Florida.
He looked older than Corinne by maybe eight years. Sunburned. Gray at the temples. No polished lawyer beside him. No carefully arranged background.
Rachel introduced me.
Daniel stared at the screen.
Then he said, “My sister married you?”
I thought he was acting.
He wasn’t.
“You didn’t know?”
“Corinne and I haven’t spoken in six years.”
“Why?”
His mouth twisted.
“Because she tried to blame Northcrest on me.”
There it was.
Another version.
Daniel admitted creating the company. He admitted receiving the payments. He admitted keeping approximately sixty thousand dollars in fees.
Then he said the rest was Corinne’s idea.
“She told me Laura needed expenses moved quickly before the sale.”
“Did you know the invoices were fake?”
“Not at first.”
“And later?”
Daniel looked away.
“Yes.”
“Then you kept doing it.”
“Yes.”
I appreciated the answer because he did not decorate it.
“What happened to the rest of the money?”
“A brokerage account.”
“Yours?”
“No.”
I leaned toward the screen.
“Whose?”
Daniel stared directly at me.
“Corinne’s.”
For several seconds I heard nothing.
Not Rachel.
Not the air conditioner.
Not even my own breathing.
“She told me she had no financial interest.”
Daniel actually laughed.
“My sister lies best when the truth would cost her something.”
He provided the name of the brokerage institution and an old tax document showing Corinne as beneficial owner.
Then he told us something worse.
Three weeks before Laura died, Corinne contacted him after years of silence.
“What did she want?” Rachel asked.
“My old Northcrest computer.”
“Why?”
“She wanted me to destroy it.”
I felt my jaw tighten.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s my sister.”
I stared.
“That isn’t an answer.”
Daniel leaned closer.
“Yes, it is. I knew her.”
Corinne’s attack came before the call ended.
Rachel received an email from her attorney.
Corinne had filed for temporary access to my home and accused me of isolating her from marital property. The complaint also alleged that I had been “coaching” Maisie to repeat accusations.
I almost threw the phone.
“She’s fourteen months old.”
Rachel took it from me before I could respond.
“Exactly why you do not write anything angry.”
“She hurt my daughter.”
“I know.”
“She put fingerprints on her arm and now she’s saying I taught a baby to lie.”
“I know.”
Rachel moved closer.
“Ethan, she needs you to become the angry man in her story. Do not help her.”
That sentence followed me home.
Maisie was sitting on the living-room floor when I arrived, hitting her stuffed rabbit gently against the wheel of a toy bicycle.
She looked up.
“Daddy.”
I knelt.
“Hey, baby.”
She pointed toward the hallway.
“Cab’net.”
My body stiffened.
“What about the cabinet?”
She stood, rabbit tucked under one arm, and walked toward it.
Anna followed us.
I opened the doors.
The shelves were partly empty now because Rachel had removed the legal files.
Maisie pointed lower.
“Mommy.”
“You mean Mommy’s papers?”
She shook her head.
“Mommy.”
Then she touched the wooden floor inside the cabinet.
I crouched.
At first I saw nothing.
Then I noticed a narrow scratch running across the back panel.
Too straight.
I pressed against it.
Nothing.
Maisie reached around me and pushed one of the small wooden pegs in the corner.
A click.
Anna gasped.
The entire back panel shifted forward half an inch.
My skin went cold.
May you like
Laura had built a false back into the cabinet.
And whatever she had hidden there, Corinne had apparently never found it.
