Chapter 4 - The Ghost in the Ledger
The air left my body as if I had been dropped from a ten-story roof.
“What did you say?”
“My dad went to your wife because she was the only one who still had a conscience,” Maya said, her voice dropping into a register of somber solemnity. “It was three weeks before she died. I was with him. We met her at the Lincoln Park Conservatory, by the fern room. She looked so thin, Daniel. Her skin was like paper. My dad gave her the drive. He said, *‘Eleanor, Marcus is stealing from the children’s fund, and he’s framing me for it.’*”
Maya reached into her torn jacket, pulled out the battered leather wallet that had belonged to her father, and produced a folded, faded piece of paper.
“Your wife told my dad that she knew Marcus was dirty. She said she had discovered financial irregularities in the Harrison Family Foundation’s pediatric oncology grants. She was trying to audit him quietly because she didn't want to destroy you while she was... while she was dealing with her diagnosis. She had early-stage leukemia, Daniel. She had kept it from you for four months because you were in the middle of taking Harrison Global public.”
I reached out, my fingers trembling uncontrollably, and took the paper from Maya’s hand.
It was Eleanor’s handwriting. Her distinctive, elegant, sloping script, written on the stationery of the Drake Hotel.
*Arthur,* the note read.
*I have the ledger hashes safely tucked away where Marcus will never look. Look for the third variation of Bach’s Goldberg. The safe is keyed to the date Sophie took her first steps. If anything happens to me, go directly to the U.S. Attorney. Do not trust Daniel until Marcus is behind bars; Marcus has poisoned his ear. Protect Maya. I will protect you.*
*— Eleanor.*
The date at the bottom was November 12th.
Four days before Eleanor’s car went through the guardrail on Lake Shore Drive.
Ten days before Arthur Vance was found drowned in his sedan.
I fell back against my desk, the paper crinkling in my clenched fist. The room spun around me. For two years, I had believed Eleanor was taken by a patch of black ice on a routine grocery run. For two years, I had believed Arthur had succumbed to greed and cowardice. For two years, I had allowed Marcus Croft to sit in my boardroom, to manage Eleanor’s memorial trust, to play the role of the devoted brother-in-law who held the grieving widower together.
“She was murdered,” I whispered, the words tasting like copper and bile.
“I don’t know if Eleanor was murdered,” Maya said quietly, her tough, street-hardened facade slipping, revealing the terrified orphan underneath. “Maybe the ice was real. But my dad wasn't an accident. Two days after your wife died, Marcus Croft came to our house. He told my dad that Eleanor took the evidence to her grave. He told my dad to sign a confession taking the fall for the forty million, or else I would end up in a ditch. My dad refused. That night, Dad put me on a train to my aunt’s in Milwaukee. By the time the train crossed the state line, Dad’s car was in the river. And when I got to Milwaukee, my aunt had already been threatened by men claiming to be private investigators from Harrison Global. She was terrified. She locked the door and called the cops on me.”
Maya drew her knees up to her chest, curling into the massive leather armchair.
“I’ve been surviving on scrap food and tutoring kids outside public libraries for fourteen months. I watched St. Ambrose because I knew Croft sent his own daughters there. I wanted to find a way to get to him. But then... then I saw Sophie.”
She looked up at me, tears cutting clean channels through the soot on her cheeks.
“Sophie looked exactly like I felt. Surrounded by millions of dollars, surrounded by guards and gates, and completely, totally abandoned.”
A knock sounded at the study door.
Mrs. Gable opened it slowly, carrying a tray with steaming chicken soup, warm crusty bread, and a plate of roasted vegetables. Behind her stood Sophie, wearing her flannel pajamas, holding a worn, velvet-covered music box in her small hands.
“Dad?” Sophie murmured, looking at my devastated face. “Are you okay?”
I looked at my daughter. I looked at the girl in the chair whose father I had abandoned to the wolves. The cold, mechanical schedule that had governed my life for twenty-four months shattered into a million jagged shards.
May you like
“No, sweetheart,” I said, my voice breaking as I walked over and knelt before Sophie, pulling her into my arms. “I haven’t been okay for a very long time. But we are going to fix it now.”
***
