Chapter 4 - The Man on the Other End of the Line
I didn't go to bed. I sat in the armchair just inside my study with the door cracked two inches, and I waited.
Forty minutes later the light under the sitting room door went dark. Vivian's footsteps moved down the hall. The bedroom door opened and shut.
I gave it another twenty minutes. Then I crossed the hall.
It was a small room — two chairs, a writing table, a lamp. Vivian kept a few things in there. A paperback she was working through. A notepad. Her reading glasses.
I picked up the notepad. The top sheet was blank. I tilted it under the lamp.
The pen from the page before had pressed through. I could read most of it.
Thurs — L confirms. Account active. W signs or we move without.
W. That was me.
L. I had no idea who L was.
I carefully tore off the blank top sheet, folded it, and put it in my pocket.
At eight the next morning I called Harold Benton.
"Walter." His voice went careful, the way it did whenever he sensed trouble. "What's wrong?"
"I need you to look at something. Not on the phone. Can you see me today?"
"Two o'clock," he said. "Come to the office."
I told Vivian I had a routine follow-up with my cardiologist. She offered to drive me. I said Harold's office was sending a car. She let it go without a single question, and that told me plenty.
Harold's office was on the twelfth floor of a building downtown. He met me at the door himself, which he only does when he thinks something is bad.
I laid the document on his desk and said nothing.
He put on his glasses. Read it once, fast. Read it again, slow.
"This isn't your signature," he said.
"No."
"Who's had their hands on things you've signed lately? Anything she could've used to trace from?"
"The homeowner's insurance renewal. Three weeks ago. I signed it at the kitchen table while she made coffee."
Harold set the paper down and looked at me over the rims of his glasses.
"Walter. Has anything else happened that bothered you? Anything at all — even something you brushed off at the time?"
I thought about it.
"My evening pills," I said slowly. "A couple months back I started feeling wrung out after dinner. Foggy. I figured it was just age. Vivian had me on some supplement she said was for circulation. I quit taking it on my own, and inside a week I felt like myself again."
Harold didn't move for a moment.
"Do you still have the bottle?"
"I threw it out."
He nodded once, picked up his phone, and dialed without telling me who he was calling. When the line connected he said only, "I need Victor. Tell him it's urgent."
He covered the receiver. "Victor Salas. Private investigator. Used to work financial crimes for the state. I've hired him twice. He's quiet and he's thorough." He paused. "Walter, listen to me carefully. You go home tonight and you act completely normal. Nothing different. Can you do that?"
"Yes."
"Good." Back to the phone. "Victor. I've got a client. Forged wire authorization, likely document fraud, and I need a full background trace on a woman calling herself Vivian Hargrove. Married name. I'll send what we've got."
He hung up. "How long has she had access to your accounts?"
"Since the wedding. I put her on the household account. The investment accounts and the estate accounts she can't move a dollar out of without my signature."
"Except," Harold said, tapping the page, "somebody's been hard at work on that problem."
I looked at the paper. Four hundred and twenty thousand dollars. A routing number. A deadline two days away.
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"What do I do tonight?"
Harold folded his hands. "Tonight you have dinner with your wife. You tell her the cardiologist says you're in great shape. And you watch her face when you say it."
