Chapter 5 - The Woman Who Wanted Emma Gone
Margaret did not confront Richard.
Not yet.
Instead, Thomas contacted the investigator Daniel had intended to meet three years earlier.
Special Agent Caroline Webb had never forgotten Daniel Hale.
Within hours, copies of Samuel’s recordings, the insurance documents, Daniel’s notarized statement, and the crash photographs were secured.
But evidence was not the same as proof.
Richard could claim ignorance.
Forgery by employees.
Accounting mistakes.
Even the brake line photograph did not identify who had cut it.
Then Caroline asked a question no one expected.
“Who is Lydia Vale?”
Margaret looked up.
“Richard’s wife.”
“Ex-wife,” Thomas corrected.
“They divorced?”
“Quietly. Two years ago.”
Caroline turned her laptop around.
A series of transfers appeared.
Money had moved from one of Richard’s shell companies into an account controlled by Lydia.
The final payment occurred six days after Daniel died.
Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Margaret stared.
“Find her.”
Lydia Vale lived three hours away.
She agreed to meet only after Caroline promised her name would remain confidential during the preliminary investigation.
Margaret insisted on attending.
Lydia looked nothing like Margaret remembered.
Gone were the immaculate dresses and carefully arranged blond hair.
She wore jeans and a gray sweater.
She looked tired.
When Margaret entered the room, Lydia began crying.
“I’m sorry.”
Margaret sat across from her.
“For what?”
Lydia could barely speak.
“For knowing.”
Margaret felt cold.
“Knowing what?”
“Not everything.”
“Then tell me what you knew.”
Lydia explained that Richard had changed after Samuel Hale discovered irregularities.
He became secretive.
Paranoid.
He kept a second phone.
Then Daniel began asking questions.
“One night,” Lydia said, “Richard came home furious. He said Daniel was going to destroy everything.”
Margaret’s nails dug into her palm.
“What did you say?”
“I told him to let Daniel expose whatever he had found.”
Lydia looked ashamed.
“Richard laughed.”
“What happened next?”
“Three weeks later, Daniel died.”
Silence.
“And the money?”
Lydia closed her eyes.
“He gave it to me.”
“Why?”
“To leave.”
Margaret stared at her.
“He paid you to disappear?”
“He said if I stayed, I would eventually say something stupid.”
“Did you know he killed Daniel?”
“I suspected.”
Margaret stood.
“You suspected for three years?”
Lydia began sobbing.
“I was afraid.”
“My son was thirty-five years old.”
“I know.”
“He wanted a family.”
“I know.”
“He died alone on a road because everyone around Richard Vale was afraid.”
Lydia looked up.
“Daniel wasn’t alone.”
Margaret froze.
“What?”
Lydia wiped her face.
“There was someone else at the crash.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know his name.”
She reached into her bag.
“I kept this because I knew someday I might need it.”
A photograph.
Richard standing beside a muscular man in a dark work jacket.
“Richard called him Cole.”
Thomas recognized him.
“Cole Mercer.”
A subcontractor.
He had worked on several Hale projects.
Including Willow Creek.
Caroline began searching records.
Cole Mercer had disappeared from Millbrook the morning after Daniel’s death.
But he was not dead.
He lived in Tennessee.
By evening, investigators had located him.
Cole refused to speak.
Until they showed him the photograph of the cut brake line.
Then he asked for a lawyer.
The case moved quickly after that.
Richard was questioned.
His offices were searched.
Records were seized.
Margaret waited.
Emma waited beside her.
Samuel slept in Margaret’s arms.
And for the first time since the cemetery, Margaret allowed herself to simply hold him.
“You’re good at that,” Emma said.
Margaret smiled faintly.
“I had practice.”
“Daniel?”
“Terrible sleeper.”
Emma laughed.
“Samuel too.”
Margaret looked down.
“He would have loved this child.”
“I know.”
“He would have been terrified.”
“That too.”
Margaret looked at Emma.
“And he would have called me every ten minutes asking what to do.”
Emma smiled through tears.
“He talked about you constantly.”
Margaret’s expression changed.
“He did?”
“All the time.”
Emma told her stories.
Daniel complaining about Margaret reorganizing his kitchen.
Daniel buying her a new furnace without telling her.
Daniel pretending to dislike her apple pie while taking three slices home.
With every story, Margaret recovered a piece of her son she had not known was missing.
Then Emma said something that stopped her.
“He bought a ring.”
Margaret stared.
“What?”
“He never gave it to me.”
“How do you know?”
“I found the receipt after he died.”
Margaret looked toward Thomas.
Willow Creek.
The locked drawer.
Daniel’s letter had mentioned another secret.
Margaret suddenly remembered.
“The drawer.”
“What drawer?”
“Daniel wrote about something inside a locked drawer.”
Thomas looked up.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
Margaret retrieved Daniel’s original letter.
Near the bottom, beneath a fold she had barely noticed, was a faint line.
The desk in Dad’s old workshop. Bottom drawer.
Samuel Hale’s workshop still stood behind Margaret’s barn.
No one had used it in years.
They drove there before sunset.
Margaret unlocked the door.
Dust floated through golden light.
Samuel’s tools remained on the walls.
Daniel had learned woodworking in this room.
Margaret found the desk.
Bottom drawer.
Locked.
The small key from Willow Creek fit.
Inside was a velvet ring box.
Emma covered her mouth.
Margaret opened it.
A simple diamond ring.
Beneath it was another folded note.
Emma’s name was written on the front.
Margaret handed it to her.
Emma could barely open it.
She read silently.
Then collapsed into a chair.
Margaret knelt beside her.
“What does it say?”
Emma handed her the note.
Emma,
If you’re reading this, I didn’t get the chance to ask.
I know I made our life harder than it needed to be. I know loving me has required more patience than any person should have.
But when this is finished, I want ordinary things.
Sunday mornings.
A noisy kitchen.
Children, if we’re lucky.
My mother criticizing the way I load her dishwasher.
Margaret laughed through tears.
I want all of it.
So when I come back, I’m going to ask you one question.
Please make me wait at least five seconds before you say yes, or I’ll never hear the end of it.
Daniel.
Emma pressed the note to her lips.
“He was coming back.”
Margaret wrapped her arms around her.
“Yes.”
Emma sobbed against Margaret’s shoulder.
“He was coming back.”
For the first time, Margaret held Emma not as a stranger.
Not as a witness.
Not even as the mother of Daniel’s child.
She held her as another person who had lost him.
Then Thomas’s phone rang.
He answered.
His expression became grim.
“Cole Mercer is talking.”
Margaret stood.
“What did he say?”
Thomas listened.
Then slowly lowered the phone.
“He says Richard didn’t order Daniel’s death.”
Margaret stared.
“What?”
“He says someone else did.”
May you like
And the name Cole had given investigators belonged to a person who had been sitting at Daniel’s funeral in the front row.
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