Chapter 9 - The House with No Curtains.
Victoria read Julian's message once.
Then she handed the phone to Rebecca.
"Preserve that."
Rebecca photographed the screen, exported the message record, and forwarded it to counsel working with Chicago police.
No one used the word threat casually anymore.
By midmorning, Daniel Price had been found.
He was alive.
A delivery driver spotted his car parked beneath an expressway overpass and called emergency services after seeing him slumped behind the wheel.
The cut above his eyebrow required stitches.
He had also been drugged with a sedative.
Daniel remembered leaving his office around midnight after receiving a message that appeared to come from Nathaniel.
The message instructed him to meet an Ashford courier.
Two men approached his car instead.
He remembered almost nothing after that.
The photograph on Victoria's phone had been taken while he was barely conscious.
Daniel's first coherent statement to police changed the case completely.
He admitted notarizing the fraudulent partnership agreement.
But he insisted he had not done it willingly.
Three weeks earlier, someone sent him photographs of his adult son entering an illegal gambling club.
The message threatened to release evidence that would destroy his son's medical residency unless Daniel notarized documents placed in a secure envelope.
Daniel never met the person who delivered them.
He only received instructions.
"Why didn't he tell us?" Victoria asked.
Rebecca looked tired.
"Shame works because people think silence will contain damage."
Victoria thought of Camille.
Of Mateo.
Of herself.
Silence was Conrad's favorite currency.
Police wanted Victoria to move somewhere secure while they assessed the threats.
Nathaniel offered his Gold Coast apartment.
Mara rejected it immediately.
Too obvious.
The Ashford family estate in Lake Forest was also too predictable.
Rebecca suggested a small property owned through a legal trust on the North Shore.
Nathaniel looked surprised.
"We still have that house?"
"Your wife insisted on keeping it."
Victoria looked at him.
"Mom owned a secret house?"
Nathaniel almost smiled.
"Your mother owned several things she didn't tell me about until tax season."
The property was a modest brick house in Wilmette two blocks from the lake.
No gate.
No visible security.
No grand driveway.
It had belonged to Evelyn's aunt and had been kept as a quiet place for foundation guests who needed privacy.
Victoria arrived shortly after noon with Rebecca and two plainclothes security officers.
Nathaniel stayed downtown to meet investigators.
Mara worked from a separate location.
The house felt almost aggressively ordinary.
A narrow staircase.
Old wood floors.
A kitchen with yellow cabinets Evelyn had apparently refused to replace.
There were no curtains in the living room.
Victoria immediately disliked that.
One officer closed the blinds.
The other checked every room.
Rebecca placed the blue folder on the dining table.
They had not yet reviewed all of it.
Victoria made coffee while Rebecca read.
For the first time in nearly fourteen hours, there was no ballroom, no camera, no lawyer on speakerphone, and no stranger commenting on Victoria's face.
The quiet should have felt safe.
It did not.
Victoria's phone kept vibrating with notifications.
She turned it facedown.
Rebecca looked up.
"You can turn it off."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I'm tired of other people deciding when I should know things."
Rebecca nodded.
She understood more than Victoria expected.
At 1:18 P.M., Mara called.
She had traced the first anonymous upload of the fake gala video through three hosting services.
The final account had been created using a disposable email address.
But payment for one premium editing service came from a corporate card.
Vale Strategic Communications.
Rebecca exhaled.
"That's enough for discovery."
Mara continued.
"There's more."
The employee assigned to the card was not Julian.
It was Elaine Porter.
The Ashford board member who had proposed Victoria take temporary leave.
Victoria stared at the wall.
Elaine had known Evelyn.
Elaine had attended Victoria's college graduation.
Elaine had sent flowers every year on the anniversary of Evelyn's death.
"How long?" Victoria asked.
Mara understood.
"We don't know how long she's been working with them."
Rebecca opened another document from the blue folder.
"Maybe this helps."
It was an eight-year-old memo written by Evelyn.
The top line contained three names.
Conrad Vale.
Martin Kessler.
Elaine Porter.
Victoria sat down.
Evelyn's note beneath the names read:
They are building a majority before anyone knows there is a vote.
Victoria felt a chill.
"She knew."
Rebecca kept reading.
Evelyn described private pressure placed on board members, donors, and trustees.
Conrad offered jobs to relatives.
Kessler discovered personal vulnerabilities.
Elaine carried information out of the Ashford boardroom.
It was almost identical to what had happened again.
The only difference was Julian.
Eight years ago, he had not been part of the plan.
Now he seemed central to it.
Victoria wondered when he entered her life strategically and when, if ever, he entered it honestly.
The question hurt more than she wanted to admit.
At 2:03 P.M., her phone rang.
Unknown number.
Rebecca shook her head.
Victoria answered anyway and activated recording after announcing it.
"This is Victoria Ashford, and this call is being recorded."
A familiar voice answered.
"You always did learn fast when cornered."
Conrad.
Rebecca immediately began taking notes.
Victoria kept her voice steady.
"What do you want?"
"To prevent your father from turning a regrettable family incident into a criminal circus."
"Daniel Price was drugged."
"I had nothing to do with that."
"Elena is missing."
A pause.
"Elena stole confidential material."
"That's not the same thing."
"You don't know what kind of person she is."
Victoria almost smiled.
"That's the sentence your family uses about everyone who stops obeying."
Conrad became quiet.
Then his voice softened.
"Your mother used to sound like you."
Victoria's grip tightened around the phone.
Rebecca looked sharply at her.
"You knew my mother well?"
"Better than your father ever understood."
Victoria felt anger flare.
"Careful."
She heard Nathaniel's voice in her own.
Conrad laughed once.
"There she is."
"What happened eight years ago?"
"Your mother made enemies because she confused stubbornness with morality."
"Did you forge documents then too?"
"No."
"Did Kessler?"
Silence.
Victoria pressed.
"Did Elaine?"
Conrad ended the call.
Rebecca immediately saved the recording.
"That silence was useful."
Victoria nodded.
A security officer entered the dining room.
"We have a car sitting across the street."
Rebecca stood.
"How long?"
"At least ten minutes."
Victoria moved toward the window.
The officer stopped her.
"Don't."
He checked the camera feed from a small exterior unit installed when they arrived.
A gray crossover sat beneath a bare tree.
The driver's face was hidden by reflection.
The license plate came back to a rental company.
Rebecca called police.
Before officers arrived, the crossover drove away.
Nothing happened for another hour.
At 3:26 P.M., Victoria finally allowed herself to lie down in the upstairs guest room.
She slept for twenty-three minutes.
A crash downstairs woke her.
Victoria sat upright.
Another crash followed.
Then the security alarm sounded.
Rebecca shouted from the hallway.
"Stay in the room."
Victoria heard footsteps running downstairs.
Glass broke near the back of the house.
One of the security officers yelled, "Police have been called."
Victoria locked the bedroom door.
Her heart hammered.
She backed toward the far wall and grabbed the heavy brass lamp from the nightstand.
A shadow moved beneath the door.
Someone tried the handle.
Once.
Twice.
Then stopped.
Victoria held her breath.
The shadow disappeared.
Sirens sounded outside.
Thirty seconds later, Rebecca knocked and identified herself.
Victoria opened the door.
No intruder had entered the house.
Someone had thrown a brick through the kitchen window and another through the living room glass.
The bricks were wrapped in paper.
The first paper contained a printed photograph of Evelyn Ashford's crashed car from eight years earlier.
The second contained one sentence.
LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER.
Victoria stared at the words until they blurred.
Then Rebecca noticed something else.
The blue folder was no longer on the dining table.
While Rebecca read the old memo, Victoria wandered through the small kitchen and opened a cabinet above the sink.
Inside were mismatched mugs, chipped plates, and a faded ceramic bowl painted with blue birds.
She remembered eating cereal from that bowl when she was nine.
Her mother had refused to throw it away after the rim cracked.
"Useful things do not become worthless because they're damaged," Evelyn had said.
Victoria leaned both hands against the counter.
The memory was almost unbearably ordinary.
For two days, her mother had existed only as evidence, warnings, photographs, and unanswered questions.
The bowl reminded Victoria that Evelyn had also burned pancakes, hated scented candles, and sang badly in the car.
Victoria needed that woman too.
May you like
Not just the dead investigator everyone was reconstructing from files.
She put the bowl back carefully before Conrad called.
