Chapter 3 - What Paige Saw
Paige refused to speak by phone.
She wanted a public place.
Detective Ortiz insisted on joining us.
At nine that morning, we sat in a corner booth inside a hotel café five blocks from police headquarters.
Paige arrived wearing yesterday’s clothes.
She looked like she hadn’t slept.
“I’m sorry,” she said before sitting down.
“For what?” I asked.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“For bringing it to you.”
Ortiz leaned forward.
“Start at the beginning.”
Paige wrapped both hands around a coffee she never drank.
The previous afternoon, Derek had summoned her to his private office.
A thermos sat on his desk.
“He told me it was an anniversary lunch,” she said. “He said you had been working too much.”
“Did you see where it came from?”
“No restaurant bag. Nothing.”
“Was the thermos open?”
“I don’t know.”
“What exactly did Derek say?”
Paige looked at me.
“He told me, ‘Take this directly to Renee. Don’t leave it with reception. Put it on her desk and make sure she actually eats it.’”
My skin prickled.
Ortiz wrote rapidly.
“Anything else?”
Paige nodded.
“He made me repeat it.”
“Repeat what?”
“That I would make sure you finished it.”
The café seemed to disappear around me.
Paige continued.
“I thought it was weird. But he’d been angry lately because you weren’t eating dinner with him.”
That wasn’t true.
I had been eating with him.
Less often, perhaps.
But not enough to justify the lie.
“Who prepared the soup?” Ortiz asked.
Paige looked toward the café entrance.
“Nobody at the company kitchen.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because I asked.”
She explained that shortly before going upstairs to Derek’s office, she had passed the executive kitchen. The chef told her Derek had canceled his usual catered lunch.
Later, when Paige carried the thermos downstairs, she casually thanked the chef for preparing Renee’s soup.
“He looked confused,” she said.
“He told me he hadn’t made it.”
My throat tightened.
Ortiz asked, “Did you tell anyone this yesterday?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Paige looked ashamed.
“Because Mr. Harlow called me from the hospital.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked exactly what I told police.”
I stared at her.
“And?”
“I told him.”
“What happened?”
“He said I needed to be careful because confused people could destroy careers.”
Detective Ortiz’s expression hardened.
“Was that a threat?”
“He didn’t say it like one.”
“Threats usually don’t need dramatic music,” Ortiz said.
Paige almost smiled, then didn’t.
She reached into her handbag and removed a phone.
“He texted afterward.”
Ortiz took photographs of the messages.
DEREK: Do not speculate about things you don’t understand.
DEREK: Renee has been emotionally unstable.
DEREK: My mother may have taken medication incorrectly.
DEREK: If police ask again, stick to what you personally saw.
Paige swallowed.
“There’s more.”
She opened her phone to a photograph.
It showed Derek leaving the parking garage the previous day at 10:04 a.m.
In his hand was the same stainless-steel thermos later delivered to my office.
“How did you get this?” Ortiz asked.
“Building security.”
“You have access?”
“My department coordinates executive transportation. Cameras are linked to our floor.”
“What time did Derek return?”
Paige showed another image.
10:31.
Twenty-seven minutes.
The soup arrived in my office less than an hour later.
“Where did he go?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
Ortiz did.
“We can find out.”
They pulled traffic-camera records.
Parking exits.
Cell-tower data would require legal process, but the company vehicle had GPS logs.
By that afternoon, police had an answer.
Derek drove nine miles to a private medical clinic.
Not our family doctor.
Not a hospital.
A clinic owned by a company called Northwell Executive Health.
The name was familiar.
I searched my private documents.
There it was.
A reimbursement charge from DH Holdings.
Three months earlier.
The same week my life-insurance policy had been increased.
Detective Ortiz stared at the record.
“What does DH Holdings do?”
“Officially?”
“Yes.”
“Investment management.”
“And unofficially?”
“I’m beginning to think I have no idea.”
We obtained corporate records.
DH Holdings had only one listed manager.
Derek Harlow.
The registered address was a mailbox.
But the company had made regular payments to Northwell Executive Health.
One payment each month.
Always just below ten thousand dollars.
“Structuring,” I murmured.
Ortiz glanced at me.
“You recognize it?”
“I recognize anything designed to avoid attention.”
She gave me a long look.
“You’re useful.”
“I’d rather not be.”
At four thirty, the laboratory called.
The soup contained the same cardiac medication found in Constance’s blood.
Enough to cause a medical emergency.
Potentially worse depending on body weight, metabolism and other factors.
My knees went weak.
Ortiz spoke carefully.
“There is no longer much question that the substance entered her body through the soup.”
“And the soup was intended for me.”
“Yes.”
She didn’t soften it.
Sometimes certainty is more frightening than suspicion.
That evening, Constance regained enough strength to speak.
She asked for Derek.
Then she asked for me.
Against Ortiz’s advice, I agreed to a short visit with police nearby.
Constance looked smaller in the hospital bed.
No pearls.
No makeup.
No authority.
Just a sixty-eight-year-old woman attached to machines.
When I entered, she stared at me.
“You didn’t do it.”
It wasn’t an apology.
Not yet.
But it was something.
“No.”
Her eyes closed.
“I know.”
“How?”
She looked toward the door.
“Because Derek asked me something before you arrived yesterday.”
My pulse jumped.
“What?”
“He wanted to know whether you had told me you were pregnant.”
I froze.
May you like
Constance looked directly at me.
“And Renee... I never told him you were.”
