Chapter 6 - Contingency B
No one was inside Nora’s car.
That fact became the only comforting thing about the explosion.
Police evacuated the hotel floor.
Fire investigators confirmed the fire had been deliberately started.
Diane disappeared.
Her phone was abandoned at a bus station.
Her house was empty.
Her passport was gone.
Evan remained in custody, but his attorney immediately stopped cooperating.
The following morning, prosecutors charged him with aggravated assault related to my strangulation.
More charges were expected.
He entered a plea of not guilty.
Then he asked to speak with me.
I refused.
An hour later, his attorney delivered a letter.
I almost tore it up.
Cole told me to read it.
Mara,
You think my mother planned everything.
You are wrong.
She planned more than you know.
If you want Nora safe, find the red ledger before she does.
Dad kept records behind the wine cabinet.
I am sorry.
Evan.
I read the last sentence three times.
I am sorry.
After years of apologies, the words meant nothing.
But the red ledger did.
Police obtained a warrant for the house.
I went with them because I was the only person who knew exactly where Evan’s private wine cabinet had been installed.
Walking back into that house felt like entering the scene of my own death.
The kitchen chair was overturned.
A dark stain remained near the island where my head had struck the floor.
Crime scene markers still sat beside scratches in the wood.
I stopped in the doorway.
Cole watched me.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.”
The wine room was downstairs.
Evan had built it two years earlier.
He spent more on climate control than most people spent on a car.
Behind one cabinet, detectives found a small steel panel.
Inside was a safe.
The combination was my wedding date.
That somehow hurt more than if it had been random.
Inside were cash bundles.
Foreign passports.
Client files.
And a red leather ledger.
Cole opened it.
Rows of names filled the pages.
Numbers.
Dates.
Account references.
Some names were marked with circles.
Others with Xs.
My father’s name had an X.
Thomas Bell’s name had an X.
Grant Wheeler’s name had a circle.
My name had a circle.
Nora’s name had a circle.
Then I saw another name.
Dr. Patrick Sloan.
My father’s physician.
The doctor who signed his death certificate.
Next to his name was a payment.
$175,000.
Cole photographed the page.
“That’s enough to start asking serious questions.”
There was more.
A notation beside the payment read:
R.B. CLOSED.
I nearly dropped the ledger.
Richard Bennett.
My father.
Closed.
Not deceased.
Not resolved.
Closed.
Like an account.
Then Detective Cole turned the page.
At the top was a fresh entry written only two weeks earlier.
MARA - C.B. PENDING.
I stared at those letters.
Contingency B.
Pending.
May you like
Diane had planned my death before Evan ever put his hands around my throat.
And according to the next line, she had already paid someone to make sure it happened.
