Margaret arrived carrying no documents this time.
She looked relieved by that.
For once, there was nothing in her hands to hide behind.
Ruiz placed Victor Shaw’s photograph on the table.
Margaret stared at it.
“That’s him.”
“Tell us about the fire.”
Margaret folded her coat over the back of her chair.
“It was before Daniel joined the company.”
Evan sat beside me.
Margaret glanced at him.
“You may not want him hearing this.”
Evan answered before I could.
“I’m staying.”
Margaret nodded.
The original Bennett workshop had stood near the river.
Robert leased half the building.
Victor Shaw rented the other half.
Victor repaired commercial refrigeration equipment and occasionally subcontracted for Robert.
“They were friends?”
“For a while.”
“What changed?”
“Money.”
It always returned to money.
Victor claimed Robert owed him for several large jobs.
Robert disputed the amount.
Their relationship deteriorated.
Then, one night in 1998, the building burned.
“Was anyone hurt?”
Margaret looked at the photograph.
“Victor.”
“Killed?”
“That’s what we believed.”
The fire consumed most of Victor’s side.
Investigators found human remains near the rear workbench.
Identification methods were less advanced then.
Victor’s wallet was found nearby.
Dental comparison was inconclusive because records were incomplete.
The death was accepted as his.
“What did Robert have to do with it?”
“Nothing.”
Margaret said it too quickly.
Ruiz noticed.
“What did he think he had to do with it?”
Margaret’s face tightened.
Robert and Victor had argued that afternoon.
Several employees heard them.
Robert threatened to terminate all business with him.
Victor threatened to expose something.
“What?”
“I never knew.”
“Did Mark?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He was there.”
Mark was twenty-one.
He had begun working full-time for Robert.
Daniel was seventeen.
Laura had already been driven from the family.
“What did Mark hear?”
“Victor said Robert had been falsifying invoices on municipal contracts.”
Ruiz made a note.
“Was that true?”
Margaret whispered, “Yes.”
That surprised me.
Robert, whom Daniel had spent years trying to protect as the honorable founder of the business, had his own secrets.
The false invoices inflated labor and equipment costs.
Victor helped create them.
Both men profited.
Then Victor wanted more.
“Blackmail?”
“Robert called it that.”
“And the fire?”
Margaret’s hands began trembling.
“That evening Robert came home late.”
His shirt smelled of smoke.
There was blood on one sleeve.
He told Margaret the workshop was burning.
Fire engines were already there.
“What did he say happened?”
“That he went back to talk to Victor.”
“During the fire?”
“Before.”
The two men fought.
Physically.
Robert struck Victor.
Victor fell against a workbench.
Robert believed he had injured him.
Then a container of solvent spilled.
Somehow a heater ignited the fumes.
“Robert started the fire?”
“He said it was an accident.”
“Did he call emergency services?”
“No.”
Again.
Another Bennett man.
Another injured person.
Another decision not to call.
“He ran.”
Margaret’s voice broke.
“Robert ran home.”
“What happened to Victor?”
“We thought he died.”
“Who knew Robert had been there?”
“Mark.”
I leaned forward.
“How?”
“He followed his father.”
Mark saw Robert leave the workshop.
He saw smoke.
He saw enough to understand that Robert could be blamed.
“Did Mark tell police?”
“No.”
Instead, Mark helped Robert construct a story.
Robert had been home.
Mark confirmed it.
Margaret confirmed it too.
“You gave him an alibi.”
“Yes.”
“What about Daniel?”
“He knew there had been a fire. Nothing more.”
“And Laura?”
“She was gone.”
Ruiz tapped the payment records.
“When did Victor start receiving money?”
“After the fire.”
“Why pay a dead man?”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“Because he wasn’t dead.”
Evan shifted.
The remains found inside the workshop were not Victor.
Victor contacted Robert three weeks after his supposed death.
He had escaped through a rear door after Robert fled.
The dead man was an undocumented laborer Victor had occasionally hired.
“He let everyone think the body was his?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To disappear.”
“And then he blackmailed Robert.”
Margaret nodded.
Victor knew Robert had left him injured in a burning building.
He knew about the false municipal invoices.
He knew Mark had helped provide a false alibi.
If Victor resurfaced, Robert could face fraud charges and possibly charges connected to the fire.
“So Robert paid him.”
“For years.”
“Why didn’t he go to police?”
“Because he was afraid.”
That word again.
I had begun to hate it.
“Did Victor threaten the family?”
“Not physically.”
“What did he threaten?”
“Exposure.”
Robert paid.
When Robert died, Mark inherited the secret.
“And Mark kept paying.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Mark had signed statements supporting Robert’s alibi. He was involved.”
Ruiz opened Laura’s records.
“Payments increased after Robert died.”
Margaret nodded.
“Victor demanded more.”
“Did Daniel know?”
“Not until shortly before he died.”
“How did he discover it?”
“Mark used company money.”
Daniel found the payments while tracing the gambling debts and shell-company transfers.
At first, he thought Victor Shaw was another lender.
Then he searched the name.
He found the fire.
He asked Margaret.
She lied.
Of course she did.
“When did you finally tell him?”
“Three days before he died.”
The same conversation when she revealed Mark’s history with Robert.
Daniel had discovered decades of buried wrongdoing in a single week.
No wonder he had hidden records everywhere.
“What did Daniel intend to do about Victor?”
“Find him.”
“Did he?”
Margaret looked toward me.
“I think so.”
My pulse changed.
“Why?”
“Because the night before Daniel died, he called me.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Victor isn’t the problem anymore.’”
“What did that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Ruiz asked, “Did he say anything else?”
Margaret nodded.
“He said somebody else had been collecting the money.”
The room went quiet.
Victor Shaw might truly have died sometime after the fire.
Someone had taken over the blackmail arrangement.
“Who?”
“Daniel didn’t tell me.”
Ruiz began reviewing the most recent payments.
They went to an account opened under a business name: V.S. Consulting.
The registered mailing address was a commercial mailbox.
But Daniel had written a note beside one transfer.
Same handwriting as receipts?
“What receipts?” I asked.
Nobody knew.
Evan suddenly leaned forward.
“The pharmacy.”
We looked at him.
“Walter’s receipts.”
“What about them?”
“There was writing on one.”
He looked frustrated, trying to remember.
“When I bought his medicine, Walter had an old receipt in his wallet. He wrote a phone number on it.”
“Whose number?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because Walter said somebody gave him the number after Dad died.”
My skin prickled.
“Who?”
“A woman.”
Walter had never mentioned this.
We returned to the hospital.
He was awake, irritated by the food, and pleased to see Evan.
Ruiz asked about the receipt.
Walter frowned.
Then remembered.
After Daniel died, Walter tried several times to contact our family.
One afternoon, outside the courthouse where he had gone seeking the officer from the crash, a woman approached him.
“She knew my name.”
“What did she want?”
“To know what Daniel told me.”
“Did you tell her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Didn’t like her.”
“What did she look like?”
Walter described a woman in her forties at the time.
Blond hair.
Thin.
Well dressed.
Not Helen.
Not Margaret.
Not Rachel.
“She gave you a phone number?”
“Said if I remembered anything, call.”
“Do you still have it?”
Walter laughed.
“I lose shoes, not paper.”
From his wallet, he produced a worn receipt folded into quarters.
The number was still legible.
Ruiz photographed it.
The handwriting caught my attention.
Rounded numbers.
A seven crossed through the middle.
I had seen it recently.
“Rachel.”
Ruiz looked at me.
“What?”
“Rachel writes sevens like that.”
Evan nodded.
“She does.”
Rachel had approached Walter after Daniel’s death.
But Walter’s description of the woman did not match Rachel.
“Could she have written the number for somebody else?”
Ruiz ran the phone number.
It was disconnected.
Historical subscriber records would take time.
Walter added another detail.
The woman had worn a company jacket.
Not Daniel’s company.
A cleaning company.
The name was partially visible.
BrightWay.
Ruiz searched business registrations.
BrightWay Commercial Cleaning had operated in the county for eighteen years.
Its owner was listed as Patricia Shaw.
Shaw.
Ruiz found the corporate filing.
Patricia Shaw was Victor’s daughter.
Victor had a child.
Margaret looked genuinely shocked when told.
She had never known.
Patricia would have been seventeen at the time of the fire.
She later married and used another surname socially, but maintained the cleaning company under Shaw.
Her contracts included office buildings, municipal facilities, and—until Daniel died—the Bennett company.
“She had access to the office,” I said.
“Yes.”
“She could see records.”
“Yes.”
“She could have taken over Victor’s payments.”
“Possibly.”
Ruiz contacted Patricia.
No answer.
Officers went to her registered address.
The house was empty.
A neighbor said Patricia had left several days earlier carrying suitcases.
“Before this investigation reopened?” I asked.
“Yes.”
That meant she had known something was happening before police publicly moved against Mark.
“How?”
Ruiz had no answer.
Then her phone rang.
An analyst had traced V.S. Consulting.
The account receiving the recent payments had one additional authorized user.
Rachel Pierce.
I stared at Ruiz.
Rachel was not merely helping Mark steal money.
She had access to the account receiving the Bennett family’s oldest blackmail payments.
When confronted, Rachel changed her story again.
She admitted knowing Patricia.
They had been friends for years.
Patricia had introduced Rachel to Mark.
That was how Rachel got the office-manager job.
Not by chance.
Not through an advertisement.
She had entered the Bennett company because Victor Shaw’s daughter placed her there.
“What did Patricia want?” Ruiz asked her.
Rachel finally answered.
“Proof.”
“Of what?”
“That Robert left her father to die.”
“But Victor survived.”
“Patricia didn’t know that at first.”
Victor returned secretly years later.
He contacted Patricia when she was an adult.
He told her what Robert had done.
Then he disappeared again.
“Did he die?”
Rachel nodded.
According to Patricia, Victor died twelve years ago.
Afterward Patricia continued collecting the payments.
“Blackmail.”
Rachel shook her head.
“She called it restitution.”
“For twelve more years?”
“She hated the Bennetts.”
“Enough to infiltrate their business?”
“Yes.”
“Enough to hurt Daniel?”
Rachel’s face changed.
“No.”
Ruiz watched her.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
Rachel looked toward the interview-room camera.
Then whispered, “Daniel found out who Patricia was.”
“When?”
“The day he died.”
My pulse pounded.
“What happened?”
“He called her.”
“And?”
“She asked to meet him.”
“Where?”
Rachel closed her eyes.
“The county road.”
Daniel had not simply been driving home when Mark followed him.
He had been heading toward a meeting with Patricia Shaw.
The woman whose father Robert had left inside a burning building.
And Rachel had known exactly where Daniel was going.
Click here to continue reading: PART 15: Daniel Was Driving to Meet Victor Shaw’s Daughter When Mark Followed Him, but Patricia Had Arrived With Evidence of Her Own
Six Months After My Son Started Saving for One Bicycle, His Boss Called Me With a Question I Couldn’t Answer
Part 14 of 35
