Chapter 20: Forty-Nine Dollars

Grant's POV

By three o'clock on Friday afternoon, my bottom lip had swollen into a hard purple lump, and the side of my face still burned where Juno's hand had landed.

"Fell on the stairs," I told my assistant.

"Of course, sir," she said, and looked at her screen.

At four, I went to Park Avenue.

The scan Tatum had texted me two weeks ago had a clinic name across the top: PARK AVENUE WOMEN'S IMAGING, DR. HELEN MARSH. I told myself I wanted to meet the doctor looking after my son. The truth was Tatum's face on Juno's stairs, and how she had stared at my arm instead of at me.

The receptionist looked at my lip, then at the printout I held out.

"I'm sorry, sir. Dr. Marsh retired two years ago."

"She hasn't seen a patient here?"

"Not since I started." She slid the page back. "Is something wrong with the picture?"

I thanked her and walked out.

Owen was holding the car door. He looked at my face, said nothing, and waited until we were moving.

"Sir. May I see the scan?"

I passed my phone over the seat. At the red light on Lexington, he held it beside his own and typed something with his thumb. It took less than a minute.

"It's a stock photograph, sir," he said. "Early pregnancy ultrasound, eleven weeks. A website sells it for forty-nine dollars."

"A stock baby," I said.

"Eleven weeks, sir. Very photogenic."

The car behind us honked. He drove on.

"Give me an hour at the office. I'd like to check one more thing."

An hour later, Owen knocked and came in with a thin folder and one printed page. He laid the page on my desk.

"The website keeps receipts, sir. So do we. Two weeks before Ms. Rhodes told you she was pregnant, a company card paid that site forty-nine dollars."

"Whose card?"

"A finance office card. Nobody touches those without the finance office's sign-off."

The finance office was Sloane's.

I didn't say her name. Owen didn't either. He stood with his back straight and his hands behind him.

"And the folder?"

He hesitated, one palm flat on the cover. Then he set it down.

"I started it the year I came to work for you, sir. Every mistake this company made that you blamed on someone else. The date, what happened, who you blamed, and who was actually responsible." He kept his eyes on the window behind me. "Three of the people on it were fired."

I opened it. Page one, in Owen's neat hand:

Brooks closing. Wire deadline missed. Blamed: the legal team. Two associates let go. Responsible: the finance office released the wire at 12:07 p.m. Deadline was noon.

"How many entries?" I asked.

"Thirty-six, sir. That is the newest. Nine of them have your wife's name beside the word blamed."

I remembered that day. I had stood in front of twelve board members and said my lawyers had missed page nine. Two of them had cleared their desks by Friday. I had never asked who pressed send.

I turned to the second page. My wife's name stood beside the word blamed, and then again on the next, and again on the one after.

"I told you who released the wire that same evening, sir," Owen said. "You told me to take it up with Sloane."

"Did I?"

"I was in the room."

"Why are you giving me this?"

"Because you'll need to know who you can trust, sir." Owen's voice stayed level. "I thought you should start with the people you've been blaming."

At nine o'clock that night, the front door of the townhouse was standing open.

Light poured across the steps, and inside, a woman was screaming.

I took the steps two at a time, with Owen behind me.

Tatum lay at the bottom of the main staircase on the marble, in one of my sweaters, knees drawn up, both hands pressed to her stomach.

"She pushed me!" she screamed. "She pushed me! My baby!"

Two maids stood in the dining room doorway with their hands over their mouths. Agnes Moran stood on the landing above, gripping the banister.

And at the foot of the stairs, beside an old leather trunk, stood Juno.

There was a red handprint on her left cheek. My mother stood in front of her with her right hand still raised.

"She killed him," my mother said. Her voice shook. I had never once heard it shake. "Grant, this woman walked into your house and killed your son."

"Mother," I said. "Step back from her."

"She put your son on the floor!"

Juno didn't touch her cheek. She didn't look at my mother. She looked at me.

"Agnes found her rubbish in the attic," my mother went on. "I told her to collect it by nine tonight or I'd burn it. I thought she'd send a mover. She came herself, and the moment Tatum came down the stairs, she did this."

Owen's printout was folded in my inside pocket. I felt it against my chest.

A week ago I would have believed my mother. This morning I would have believed her.

I walked past her and crouched beside Tatum. Up close, her eyes were dry. She was screaming, but she wasn't crying.

"Call an ambulance!" my mother said. "Owen!"

"No!" Tatum caught my sleeve. "No ambulance. I'll call my own doctor. She'll come to the house."

"Dr. Marsh?"

She nodded, too fast.

"Dr. Marsh retired two years ago. I was at her clinic this afternoon."

I unfolded the printout and laid it on the marble beside her face. The scan she had sent me, and next to it the same picture on a stock photo site, with the price underneath.

"Forty-nine dollars," I said. "There was never a baby, was there, Tatum?"

Nobody in the hall moved.

Agnes spoke from the landing. Her voice was small, but it carried.

"Mrs. Ellison never touched her, sir."

My mother's head came up.

"Miss Tatum came down toward her and stopped three steps from the bottom." Agnes's knuckles were white on the rail. "She looked at the floor. Then she threw herself down. I saw it from here."

My mother stared up at her housekeeper. Then she looked down at the printout, and her face went the color of the marble.

"Agnes," my mother said. "Is that true?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You're certain."

"I have cleaned that staircase for twenty years, ma'am."

Tatum pressed both hands over her mouth. "I was scared!" she cried. "You were drifting away. All you ever talked about was work, and Margaret always said you'd only marry a woman who gave you an heir!"

My mother crossed the floor and slapped her across the face.

The crack went up the stairwell. Tatum's head snapped sideways. A red mark bloomed on her cheek in the same place as the one on Juno's.

"Don't you dare put this on me," my mother said.

I stood. "Who bought the picture, Tatum?"

"I can't tell you!"

"Who?"

"I signed things!" She was really crying now. "I can't, Grant. She said you'd never check. She said you never check anything."

She. I let the word hang in the hall.

"You have twenty minutes," I said. "Pack what you brought into this house and get out. If you're here at nine-thirty, security carries you to the curb."

"Where am I supposed to go?" Tatum said.

"Ask whoever told you to sign things."

She stared at me. Then she got up on two perfectly steady legs and ran upstairs past Agnes. A minute later drawers began slamming overhead.

Juno bent and took the trunk by its leather handle.

"Juno." I didn't know what came after her name. "Let Owen drive you home."

"No." She looked at my mother, who had not said one word to her. "You owe me an apology, Margaret."

"I owe you nothing."

"Agnes." Juno turned her head. "You were here the night of the dinner party, when Margaret's diamonds turned up in my bag. Did you see anything?"

My mother stiffened. "Don't question my staff."

"It's a fair question, Mother," I said.

She looked at Agnes. Agnes looked at the floor, then up at the landing's dark corner, then back at the floor.

"Agnes." My mother stepped toward the landing. "Speak."

"Ma'am." Agnes swallowed. "The night of the dinner party, I was in the pantry. I saw Miss Sloane take the necklace out of her own clutch."

The front door opened behind us.

Sloane stood in the doorway in her cream coat, her keys in her hand. Her eyes went from the trunk to Juno's cheek to Tatum's cheek, and then up to the landing.

"What a lovely party," she said. "Who didn't invite me?"

Agnes stopped talking.

Sloane's POV

I had not been home five minutes when I knew which one to worry about.

Not Juno. Juno was in the hall with her chin up, as she had been for years whenever my mother raised her voice, and I knew exactly how much she could carry. Not Tatum either. Tatum would sell her own shoes if I asked her nicely, and she wouldn't notice she'd done it.

It was the housekeeper.

Agnes Moran had worked in our house for twenty years. She had a face people forgot to look at. She had stood on that landing with her hands gripping the banister, and she had opened her mouth.

I smiled at everyone. I took off my coat. "Sit down, Mother," I said. "Before you fall." She sat. "That girl lied to us, Sloane." "Then we'll discuss it in the morning."

Then I went upstairs, shut myself in my bedroom, and made two calls.

"Northline Advisory," I told the first. "Every payment that firm has made for the last three years. Every account. Every name. I don't care what it costs."

The second was shorter.

"Agnes Moran," I said, and I said it again so I would remember it. "Agnes Moran. Find out what she's afraid of."