Chapter 6 - The Woman Who Had Done This Before
I didn't sleep. I sat in my study with the door locked and listened to Victor Salas for forty minutes.
Her real name was Sharon Delaney. She grew up in a small town in Indiana. She'd been married twice.
The first time at twenty-four, to a retired engineer named Arthur Lindqvist. He died eighteen months into the marriage — ruled a cardiac event. He was seventy.
The second time at twenty-nine, to a widower named Douglas Warren, a property developer in his late sixties. Warren lived, but he lost almost everything before his daughter stepped in and got the marriage annulled.
"The daughter hired her own investigator," Victor said. "That report is how I found the pattern. Sharon works slow. She builds the relationship. She gets on the accounts. She creates the paperwork. And then she's gone."
"Arthur Lindqvist," I said. "He died."
"Cardiac event. Never looked at as anything but natural. He had a heart history. He was seventy."
I thought about the supplement. The fog that lifted in a week.
"Is there enough to bring in the police?"
"The forged document by itself is enough to open a case. Add the wire authorization, the pattern across two marriages, the identity fraud — yes. But timing is everything. If she moves the money before you act, getting it back turns into a nightmare." He paused. "Harold wants to move tomorrow. He's already talked to a contact in the financial crimes unit. They'll need your cooperation and the original paper."
"She can't know," I said. "If she gets even a hint—"
"She won't. We do it quiet. One day."
After I hung up I sat there a long time without moving.
I thought about Eleanor. Fifty years with someone who knew every version of me — the nervous young man, the stubborn middle-aged one, the old one who was slower than he wanted to admit. She'd loved all of them without ever making a show of it.
Then I thought about Vivian across the table at dinner, her hand warm over mine, talking about the islands.
I had wanted so badly to believe a woman could look at me like that and mean it.
The anger came the way it always does with me. Not a spark. A tide.
In the morning I called Rosa before Vivian was up.
"I need you here early," I said. "And I need you to act exactly the way you always do. Can you manage that?"
A pause. "Yes, Mr. Hargrove. I can."
"Rosa." I stopped. "What you did Tuesday night — coming to me — that took real nerve. I want you to know I understand that."
She was quiet a moment. "My mother always said that keeping quiet when you see something wrong is its own kind of choice. I didn't want to make that choice."
I got to Harold's office at nine. Victor was already there, along with a woman named Detective Angela Ruiz from the financial crimes unit — small, blunt, and already through Victor's report.
She looked at the forged document for maybe thirty seconds.
"We can move on this," she said. "I'll need you available this afternoon. And Mr. Hargrove — after this meeting, you go home and behave like nothing has changed. Can you do that?"
"I did it last night," I said.
She held my eyes. "This afternoon we need her somewhere she can't touch the account or destroy anything. So we need to know where she'll be, and for how long."
"She has a standing appointment," I said. "Hair salon. Every Thursday at two. She's usually gone two hours."
Detective Ruiz checked her watch.
May you like
It was Thursday.
"Perfect," she said.
