Chapter 4
Edmund arrived before midnight.
Not because I called him.
Winifred did.
That mistake helped me.
He entered the ballroom expecting control.
Instead he found half the guests gone, Thaddeus under guard, and Winifred sitting silently beside the abandoned dessert table.
I placed the phone in front of him.
His eyes changed.
“You shouldn’t have that.”
“Excellent beginning.”
He sat.
Edmund was sixty-seven and still believed age was an argument.
“What was the original recording?”
He looked at Winifred.
Then Thaddeus.
No one rescued him.
Finally:
“Julian recorded the argument.”
My heart tightened.
“Where?”
Edmund said nothing.
I looked at the phone again.
The oldest audio file had been trimmed.
Thirty-eight seconds.
It started in the middle of shouting.
Someone possessed a longer version.
“Who?”
Winifred whispered:
“I do.”
Thaddeus turned toward her.
Even he had not known.
Interesting.
She carried an older phone in her evening bag.
The original file lasted eleven minutes.
I listened once.
Julian’s voice.
Controlled at first.
Then angry.
He accused Thaddeus of moving family support money into a private investment pool.
Thaddeus denied stealing it.
He said he was “making it productive.”
Julian demanded the ledger.
Then the argument changed.
Julian said:
“I’m telling Aurelia tomorrow.”
Thaddeus answered:
“If you tell her, you’re finished here anyway.”
Then Julian:
“I already am.”
There.
He really had planned to leave operations.
Not me.
Operations.
The argument continued.
No threats of murder.
No confession.
Then car doors.
Rain.
Julian saying:
“Move.”
Thaddeus:
“You shouldn’t drive like this.”
Julian:
“Get away from my car.”
The recording ended.
My husband drove away furious.
An hour later, he died on the wet road.
Tragic.
Not homicide.
But Thaddeus had lied about being there.
Winifred had hidden the recording.
Edmund had helped.
Why?
Not to conceal murder.
May you like
To conceal the ledger.
And the ledger apparently threatened something bigger than one brother’s stolen money.
