Chapter 11 - The Witness at Table Nine.
By evening, Victor's attorney had denied everything.
The company car had allegedly been used by a driver.
Victor had allegedly spent the afternoon at a charity planning luncheon.
The missing documents had allegedly never existed.
Jennifer listened to Rachel summarize the response and felt almost calm.
Victor's strategy was familiar now.
Turn facts into questions.
Turn questions into delays.
Turn delays into doubt.
Brandon had learned from a master.
The difference was that Victor had practiced the method for decades.
"Can he prove the luncheon?" Jennifer asked.
Rachel looked at her notes.
"He has witnesses."
"Of course he does."
"And photographs posted at 2:20."
Nora turned her laptop around.
The images showed Victor smiling beside donors at a downtown restaurant.
Jennifer frowned.
The drive from the restaurant to her house took at least twenty-five minutes.
Victor could not have arrived at 2:11 and appeared downtown at 2:20.
"Then who used his car?"
"That's what we need to know."
Jennifer's phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number appeared.
I WAS AT TABLE NINE TODAY.
Jennifer stared at it.
Another message followed.
I SAW WHO TOOK THE CASE FROM BRANDON.
Jennifer showed Rachel.
"Could be bait."
"Could be useful."
Rachel nodded.
"Ask for a name and a public meeting place."
Jennifer typed.
WHO ARE YOU?
The response came almost immediately.
DIANE PRESCOTT.
Jennifer recognized the name.
Diane was a retired attorney and longtime friend of Catherine's.
She had been at the banquet wearing a champagne dress and pearls.
She was also the older guest Jennifer remembered lowering her glass when the confrontation began.
Jennifer called her.
Diane answered on the first ring.
"I should have spoken before you left."
"What did you see?"
"Not over the phone."
They met forty minutes later in the lobby lounge of Jennifer's hotel.
Diane arrived carrying a large beige handbag and an expression of intense disapproval.
"Your husband has terrible judgment."
Jennifer almost smiled.
"That may be the least disputed fact today."
Diane sat across from Jennifer and Rachel.
"I was at table nine because Catherine invited me."
"I remember."
"From where I sat, I could see the service corridor beside the ballroom."
Diane placed her handbag on the chair beside her.
"After you walked out, Brandon followed you with the black case."
Jennifer nodded.
"Then?"
"He came back upstairs without it."
"He said he gave the valet the case."
"He did."
"You saw him?"
"No. I saw Claire."
Jennifer leaned forward.
"At the party?"
Diane nodded.
"She was near the service elevators wearing a staff jacket over her clothes."
Rachel frowned.
"Why?"
"I don't know."
Diane opened her handbag and removed her phone.
"But I took a photograph because I thought I recognized her from one of Catherine's old family pictures."
Jennifer's pulse quickened.
Diane enlarged an image.
Claire stood in the service corridor holding the black briefcase.
Beside her was a man wearing a hotel maintenance jacket.
His face was partly turned away.
But Jennifer recognized him immediately.
Arthur Bell.
She stopped breathing for a moment.
"That's Arthur."
Diane nodded.
"I thought so."
Rachel asked the obvious question.
"You knew him?"
"Professionally. Years ago."
Jennifer stared at the timestamp.
3:07 p.m.
Minutes after she had left the ballroom.
Arthur had been inside the hotel.
Alive.
Watching.
Diane swiped to a second photograph.
This one showed Arthur speaking to Claire near the elevator.
The case sat on a service cart between them.
Then Diane showed a third.
A man in a dark overcoat had approached from the opposite corridor.
Victor Hale.
Jennifer looked up.
"Victor was there?"
"For less than two minutes."
"But he wasn't a guest."
"No."
Rachel checked the banquet schedule.
"The charity luncheon ended at two thirty-five. He could have reached the hotel by three."
Diane nodded.
"He never entered the ballroom."
Jennifer enlarged the photograph.
Victor's expression was tense.
Arthur was pointing one finger toward him.
Claire held the case tightly against her side.
"Did you hear anything?"
"A few words."
"What?"
Diane thought carefully.
"Arthur said, 'It ends today.'"
Jennifer felt a chill.
"Victor answered?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
Diane looked directly at her.
"He said, 'Not if she opens the wrong one first.'"
Rachel and Jennifer exchanged a glance.
The red and white documents.
Victor knew the case contained two versions.
That was powerful.
Diane continued.
"Then Claire left with the case."
"Arthur?"
"He went toward the parking garage."
"Victor?"
"Back to the lobby."
Jennifer sat back.
Arthur had been close enough to walk into the ballroom.
He had chosen not to.
"Why didn't he come to me?"
Diane's expression softened.
"Maybe he thought the case had to reach you first."
Jennifer shook her head.
"He could have ended this years ago."
"Maybe."
Diane hesitated.
"Or maybe he was afraid you would trust your husband instead."
The words stung because seven years earlier, Jennifer probably would have.
Rachel asked Diane to send the original photographs with metadata preserved.
Diane agreed.
Before leaving, she looked at Jennifer.
"There is one more thing."
"What?"
"Your mother called me about a month before she died."
Jennifer's eyes narrowed.
"Why?"
"She asked a hypothetical question about marital trusts."
"What question?"
Diane folded her hands.
"She asked whether a spouse who knowingly relied on a forged instrument could later claim protection because someone else created the forgery."
Jennifer understood immediately.
"What did you tell her?"
"That knowing reliance changes everything."
Diane stood.
"Your mother said, 'Good. Then he will have a choice.'"
Jennifer watched Diane leave.
Rachel remained silent for several seconds.
Then her phone rang.
She answered, listened, and looked at Jennifer.
"The forensic technician finished the security review at your house."
"And?"
"The cameras weren't disabled from inside the house."
"Where?"
"Remote administrator access."
Jennifer's stomach tightened.
"Whose account?"
Rachel looked grim.
"Yours."
Jennifer stared at her.
"I didn't do it."
"I know."
"Then someone has my credentials."
Rachel nodded.
"Or an old device still authorized under your name."
Jennifer thought back through years of phones, laptops, office tablets.
Then she remembered the laptop Brandon gave her after Katherine died.
He had configured everything himself.
The laptop was no longer in her possession.
She had given it to Kessler Holdings for secure disposal three years ago.
The executive who signed the disposal receipt was Victor Hale.
Diane also remembered one detail from the hotel corridor that the photographs did not capture.
When Victor approached Arthur, Brandon appeared briefly at the far end of the hallway.
He saw all three of them.
Then he turned around before they noticed him.
"You're certain?" Jennifer asked.
"Completely."
That meant Brandon knew Arthur was alive before he entered Katherine's study and claimed he did not know where the lawyer was.
Jennifer felt fresh anger, but underneath it came something more useful.
Precision.
She wrote the time in her notes.
3:09 p.m.
Another lie attached to a minute.
Another fact no longer dependent on anyone's interpretation.
Diane watched her write.
"Your mother used to do that."
"Do what?"
"Write down the small facts when everyone else was arguing about the big story."
Jennifer closed the notebook.
"I'm beginning to understand why."
Diane refused reimbursement for the photographs or her time.
"Katherine once helped me when I was the only woman in a room full of men explaining why I had misunderstood my own contract," she said.
Jennifer smiled faintly.
"That sounds like her."
"Then consider this repayment."
Diane stood and adjusted her handbag.
"But don't make the mistake your mother sometimes made."
"Which one?"
"Thinking strength means doing every difficult thing without witnesses."
May you like
Jennifer looked at Rachel beside her.
For once, she did not argue.
