Page 54

Fourteen days after

F ritz Hall has been living a life of easy money and no consequences for forty-six years. That ends now.

But I know the same thing Autumn did the night she heard Will and Fritz fighting: No one is going to want to believe me. In fact, at this point, most of them would probably love nothing more than to watch me burn.

Fritz killed Will with a hammer and he’s trying to frame me for the murder. Fuck that.

No, if people are going to believe me in this place where Fritz is king, I will have to prove everything irrefutably.

And I can’t leave anything to Ardell. He’s too in love with the lore of this place, too eager to please the higher-ups to be trusted with just a hunch.

I have to bring him a heap of evidence tied up with a bow.

Perry texted this morning, and I told him I had something big but didn’t want to put it in writing.

I’ve been sitting on the floor of my closet for the better part of an hour.

I started getting dressed but then got pulled down into grief.

The sorrow comes out of nowhere. I’ll see a cuff link or a book Will left out and fall head over heels into a paralyzed state of sadness.

This time, it came when I realized that at some point I am going to have to deal with all of Will’s clothes.

All of his things. I entertain the idea of donating them for a second, but I can’t stand the thought of someone else wearing his suits, his shoes.

I’m clutching at his favorite old T-shirt, but I’m all cried out.

My phone rings, snapping me out of my spontaneous grief paralysis. It’s Marcus.

I think about answering but don’t because I hear Mia calling out from downstairs. I don’t need her to find me here.

“Hey, Mia. Coming down.” I splash a bunch of water on my face and pull myself together before heading downstairs.

She’s rummaging through the refrigerator when I reach the kitchen.

“Sorry, I don’t think there’s much in there,” I say. “I threw out most of the food. I couldn’t keep up with the casseroles on my own.”

Mia pulls out a LaCroix and sits down at the island. She looks pale, but at least the sparkle in her eyes is coming back.

“Is your mom outside?” I ask. “What’s going on? Everything okay?”

“No. My friend Ashleigh dropped me off. My chemistry books are here. Please don’t tell my mom I came. She said this is your house now and I’m not allowed to be around you.”

Shit. Constance hates me and Will is gone. I might be a murderer for all they know. Why would Constance allow Mia to have a room here?

“Oh, Mia, you can come here anytime you want.”

She looks at me with a “yeah, right” face. And, I get it. Constance is drawing her line in the sand.

“This is all so awful, I know. But, just because your dad…”

Is gone. Dead. No more. I can’t say it out loud one more time.

“Just because he’s not…” I shake my head. “I really am still your family, Mia.” I mean that when I say it. I had worked hard to build my relationship with Mia. Clearly, Constance is trying to sever all ties as quickly as possible, but I love Mia. “And I didn’t do what they’re saying I did.”

I can tell Mia’s not sure what to say to that.

“This is going to blow over.”

I hope.

“And you can leave whatever you want to leave here and all you have to do is call if you want to come over. You can stay anytime.”

Mia nods, wiping away the tears. “I’m going to grab a few things from upstairs.”

Twenty minutes later, I wave at Mia as her Uber backs out of the driveway.

I’m just like June Cleaver—if June’s husband was also murdered and she allowed her stepchild to rideshare to school.

In my defense, I had offered to drive her to school, but we both decided that it was better not to have any of Constance’s friends spot me in the carpool line. So, instead, I paid for the Uber and watched her leave.

There are a few dutiful reporters waiting just over the bridge, and I can’t help but wave at them. They look bored today, but that’s because there hasn’t been any news on Will’s case since word of the murder weapon leaked. True to form, Lindy had delivered a monologue worthy of Hamlet.

What a fucking absurdity this all is.

I am about to head back inside for a shower when I see Perry’s gray sedan pull into the driveway. I wait for him, and we walk into the house together.

I pour him a cup of coffee as I tell him everything that Autumn told me.

“That sonofabitch,” Perry says.

It’s the first emotion other than totally calm and pleasant that I have seen out of Perry since I met him. And I know how he feels: rage the fire of ten thousand suns.

“It took a lot of convincing, but Autumn is willing to go to the police. I told her to wait. We have to have more. These people will find a way to explain what little hearsay we have into nothingness and Fritz’s life of debauchery and dishonesty will go on uninterrupted.”

“Well, I think I have it.” Perry pulls a laptop out of his computer bag and opens it up.

“Through a bunch of digging and a few favors, I found something that I thought you should see.” His screen lights up with PDFs of account records from a credit union I’ve never heard of.

“Did you or Will ever open accounts here?”

“It’s not saying much, but I’ve never even heard of the place,” I tell him.

“Will’s never done any banking other than with Bank of America.

He had a whole soapbox spiel about major national banks.

It’s one place he really didn’t count on the ‘little guy,’ or so he said.

” I’m scanning the accounts and stop when I see that there is one in Mia’s name.

“What the hell? There’s one in Mia’s name? ”

“It looks like there are three large lines of credit also taken out, one in your name and one in Will’s.

And, well, it looks like all the credit’s been spent and the payments against the loans are past due.

Someone borrowed about two million dollars in both of your names, using the firm as collateral for the loan. ”

“What the actual fuck, Perry? These aren’t ours. Will doesn’t owe this kind of money. We have way more than that. Which I realize is not a very humble thing to say out loud. But it’s the truth.”

“Dean had found one of the accounts and the account number matched the one you sent me yesterday from Will’s office. If you and Will didn’t open the accounts, we need to find out who did.”

Fritz.

Autumn’s comments about overhearing Fritz and Will fight over money take on new meaning.

For all the things Fritz has done that might be socially dodgy and a little bit dicey in the world of business and trial law…

this is so much bigger. This isn’t just the threat of malpractice for handling a case poorly.

This is wire fraud and financial crimes.

This is federal prison. If Will knew about this, he would have turned Fritz in immediately.

And Fritz knew it. I think about the rage on his face that evening at the club when he thought I might stand in the way of his complete control of the firm.

Fritz really didn’t want anyone to have any reason to go looking into the firm and its finances.

His double-dealings would have surfaced all too quickly.

It’s like watching the last piece of a puzzle slide easily into its rightful place.

Will sensed something wasn’t right—Fritz meddling in the Martinez case probably didn’t help—so he hired Dean to dig into Fritz’s debts and accounts.

Then, once Fritz realized Will was onto him, he killed Will in a Hail Mary attempt to maintain the shiny facade that had shielded him from trouble or consequences for his entire life.

“It has to be Fritz.”

“Forgive me for asking such a simple question, but if you all have plenty more than what was borrowed, wouldn’t the Halls be sitting high on the hog, too? Weren’t they equal partners?”

I imagine two million dollars to be a very different sum in Arcadia. In Winter Park, though, two million dollars—especially to someone like Fritz—would be a Band-Aid, not a windfall. Fritz must have been in pretty deep somehow.

Perry rubs the back of his neck. “I am happy to keep digging on my own, Nora—”

“No. I think we have enough now. I’ve got Autumn ready to talk and we don’t have time to let her think and change her mind. There’s just one more thing.”

—

Perry pulls his gray sedan into the credit union parking lot as a clerk unlocks the front door, post-lunch.

Perry and I had spent most of the drive devising a plan for me to get the information we needed.

He’s going to wait in the car, and I’m going to go in with my best “recently widowed” performance.

All of these pins starting to drop are lifting me out of the vortex of hell I’ve been in.

I walk into the building, head held high, and scan the lobby for the best mark.

I land on a dour-looking older gentleman, hoping that he’ll take pity.

I walk over, and he motions for me to sit in the chair opposite him.

“How can I help you today?”

“Hi—” I look at his nameplate. “Dennis. My name is Nora Somerset, and my husband…” I pause as if I’m holding back a wall of emotions. Something that’s not too hard for me to fake, all things considered. “My husband died a few weeks ago—”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you. I’m trying to sort through all our affairs, and I came across several accounts here at this branch. I need to figure out what they were for because I didn’t know about them.”

Dennis hesitates a little. I clock it.

“I know there are probably rules, but it’s just me now, and I have to make sure that my finances stay in order.” I look at him with the biggest doe eyes I can muster.

C’mon, Dennis. You can do it.

“Of course, ma’am. Let me pull that up.”

I slide a piece of paper with the account numbers written down and watch as his face changes when, I am certain, he sees the past-due notices on them.