Chapter 4 - Catherine
Catherine Whitmore arrived at the bank twenty minutes later.
We didn’t call her.
That was the first thing that terrified me.
A bank employee entered the private room and quietly told Victor that Mrs. Whitmore was upstairs demanding to see him.
Victor went pale.
“How does she know we’re here?”
No one answered.
Jonathan immediately removed the flash drive from the laptop and placed it inside his jacket.
“We leave through the service exit.”
Victor shook his head.
“If we run, she’ll know we found something.”
“She already knows something.”
I stared at him.
“You’ve been married to her for thirty-six years.”
“Yes.”
“And you recognize her voice.”
“Yes.”
“You think your wife killed my mother?”
His face tightened.
“I don’t know what I think.”
I stepped toward him.
“You just heard her threatening Sarah minutes before she died.”
“It was twenty-eight years ago. That recording may have been edited.”
“You’re defending her?”
“I’m saying I need facts!”
“No. You need your comfortable life to remain intact.”
He flinched.
Good.
I wanted him to.
Jonathan interrupted.
“Arguing here is dangerous.”
Before we could move, the door opened.
Catherine walked in.
No one had permitted her.
She simply entered as if the world had always belonged to her.
She was sixty-one and elegant in a cream suit, diamond earrings and perfectly arranged blond hair.
She looked exactly like the kind of woman who had never been told no.
Her gaze landed on me.
For a fraction of a second, something passed across her face.
Recognition.
Then it vanished.
“So,” she said quietly. “You’re Emily.”
My skin prickled.
Victor stepped between us.
“How did you find us?”
“Your driver told me.”
“I didn’t use my driver.”
Catherine smiled.
“Then I suppose someone else did.”
Jonathan moved closer to me.
Catherine noticed.
“Still playing bodyguard, Jonathan?”
“Still invading private rooms?”
Her smile disappeared.
She looked at Victor.
“You weren’t answering your phone.”
“We were busy.”
“So I see.”
Her eyes dropped to the open safe-deposit box.
Then to the silver bracelet in my hand.
Her face changed.
Only slightly.
But I saw it.
“You recognize this,” I said.
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
Victor said, “Catherine.”
She ignored him.
I held up the photograph of Sarah, Carl, Victor and me.
“Do you recognize my mother?”
Catherine studied the picture.
“I recognize Sarah Bennett.”
“You hated her.”
Victor said sharply, “Emily.”
“No. I want to hear her answer.”
Catherine looked at me.
“I was twenty-nine. My husband was sleeping with another woman. I wasn’t exactly sending her Christmas cards.”
“So you threatened her?”
She didn’t blink.
“According to whom?”
I stepped closer.
“According to her own voice recording.”
For the first time, Catherine truly reacted.
Not dramatically.
Just a tiny narrowing of the eyes.
That was enough.
Victor whispered, “You knew about the recording?”
She looked at him.
“What recording?”
Jonathan said, “Don’t.”
Victor ignored him.
“We just listened to Sarah. She was at St. Augustine. You confronted her.”
Catherine stared at her husband for several seconds.
Then she laughed.
One soft laugh.
“That’s what this is?”
Victor looked stunned.
“You remember it.”
“Of course I remember it.”
My heart hammered.
“You were there?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I followed Victor.”
Victor’s face changed.
“What?”
Catherine walked toward the table.
“I knew about the affair long before you confessed.”
She touched the photograph.
“You were terrible at hiding things.”
Victor stared at her.
“You never told me.”
“What would that have accomplished?”
“Sarah died that night!”
Catherine’s expression hardened.
“And I didn’t kill her.”
“You threatened her.”
“Yes.”
The admission came so easily that it chilled me.
“I was angry.”
My voice rose.
“She was terrified of you!”
“She was terrified of everyone that night.”
“Why?”
Catherine looked directly at me.
“Because she had discovered children were dying.”
Silence.
My stomach dropped.
“What children?”
Catherine looked toward Jonathan.
“You haven’t figured it out?”
“No.”
She sighed.
“Then Carl apparently died before telling you everything.”
Jonathan said, “Tell us.”
Catherine slowly removed her gloves.
“In the late 1990s, Whitmore Medical funded an experimental immune therapy. Officially, the trial never reached human testing.”
Victor whispered, “That’s what Sarah found.”
“Yes.”
“But you knew?”
Catherine nodded.
“My father knew.”
I looked at her.
“Your father?”
“Dr. Henry Caldwell.”
Jonathan swore under his breath.
The name meant nothing to me.
Victor, however, looked devastated.
“Your father ran St. Augustine.”
“Yes.”
Catherine’s voice had changed.
The superiority was gone.
“I followed Victor that night because I thought he was meeting Sarah to leave me.”
She looked at me.
“I was angry. Humiliated. Pregnant with our first son. I confronted Sarah.”
“You threatened her.”
“Yes.”
“Then what?”
Catherine swallowed.
“Then someone arrived.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t see.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“The power went out.”
My skin prickled.
“She told me to run.”
“Sarah told you?”
“Yes.”
Catherine’s eyes became distant.
“We heard glass breaking downstairs. Sarah pushed me toward a back staircase and told me to get out.”
“Why would she save you?”
“Because whatever she thought of me personally, she knew I was pregnant.”
Victor looked broken.
“You never told me this.”
“I was ashamed.”
“For twenty-eight years?”
“I was afraid.”
“Of whom?”
Catherine looked at him.
“My father.”
The room became silent.
Catherine continued.
“Sarah had discovered my father was conducting unauthorized trials on terminally ill children from poor families.”
I felt sick.
“He told parents their children were receiving approved compassionate treatments. They weren’t.”
Jonathan asked, “How many?”
“Sarah believed more than forty.”
Victor leaned against the table.
“Oh, God.”
“Some children improved temporarily. Others died.”
“And Richard?” Jonathan asked.
“Your father discovered money missing from the company and assumed Henry was stealing. When Sarah uncovered the medical records, everything escalated.”
I asked, “Was my mother killed to protect the trials?”
Catherine nodded.
“I think so.”
“By your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe you never asked?”
Her eyes flashed.
“I spent the next thirty years pretending that night hadn’t happened because every time I tried to investigate, someone reminded me I had children of my own.”
Victor stared at her.
“Someone threatened the boys?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I never knew.”
I didn’t believe her.
Not completely.
But something in her fear seemed genuine.
Then Jonathan’s phone rang.
He glanced at the screen.
His expression changed.
“Excuse me.”
He stepped away.
The rest of us remained frozen in the strange geometry of our newly destroyed family.
My father.
His wife.
My dead husband’s brother.
My mother’s former rival.
If someone had described this to me two days earlier, I would have laughed.
Jonathan ended the call.
“Someone broke into Carl’s house.”
I turned.
“What?”
“The neighbor saw smoke.”
“Smoke?”
Jonathan grabbed his briefcase.
“They set it on fire.”
We rushed from the bank.
By the time we reached Carl’s neighborhood, flames were coming through the roof.
Firefighters blocked the street.
I stood behind the yellow tape and watched the small house burn.
The kitchen where I made him soup.
The living room where we married.
The chair where he died.
Gone.
A firefighter carried out a half-burned wooden box.
“Does this belong to you?”
I recognized it.
Carl kept his chess pieces inside.
Except when I opened it, there were no chess pieces.
There was a photograph.
A photograph of me taken two weeks before Carl and I met.
I was leaving the grocery store.
Someone had circled my face in red ink.
On the back were three words.
SUBJECT LOCATED. CONFIRM IDENTITY.
Below it was a date.
And beneath the date was a signature.
Jonathan stared at it.
Victor stared at it.
Catherine covered her mouth.
May you like
Because the signature did not belong to Richard Whitmore.
It belonged to Carl.
