Chapter 6 - The Coat In The Closet
The screen of the laptop blurred as tears welled in my eyes.
Robert was in the car when my sister died.
For ten years, I had mourned Helen. For ten years, Robert had held my hand at the cemetery, laying flowers on her grave, telling me that accidents were just God’s tragic mysteries.
He was with her.
But why? And why flee the scene?
I stared at the grainy photograph. The camel-colored cashmere trench coat.
My mind snapped back to the coat I had found in Robert’s closet just two nights ago. The one I assumed belonged to Vanessa.
It wasn't Vanessa’s. It was the exact same coat from the ten-year-old security photo.
It was Helen’s coat.
My stomach heaved. I opened the car door and took deep, freezing breaths of morning air to keep from throwing up.
Robert hadn't just been in the car. He had kept her coat as a morbid souvenir. He had hidden it in our closet.
I looked back at the laptop. I needed to know everything. I clicked on another folder titled: Miami - 2022.
This was the year Robert claimed Andrew had his affair.
Inside were bank records. But they weren't payouts to a mistress. They were deposits. Massive deposits into a shell corporation registered in Miami. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, siphoned directly from the accounts of Robert’s engineering firm over the last four years.
He had been embezzling.
Robert was a thief. On a massive scale.
And the eighty thousand dollars from my grandchildren's account?
I found the ledger. The money hadn't gone to Vanessa. It hadn't gone to a ransom.
It had been used to buy a first-class, one-way plane ticket and a heavily expedited foreign visa.
Destination: Costa Rica.
Departure Date: Tomorrow. Tuesday, 8:00 PM.
Robert wasn't staying in the suburbs with his new girlfriend.
Vanessa was a distraction. A smoke screen. He had orchestrated a very public, very messy marital scandal to keep everyone—me, the kids, his colleagues—distracted with a domestic soap opera while he liquidated his assets and fled the country before the firm’s impending end-of-year audit caught his embezzlement.
He needed me angry about another woman. He needed me fighting over the house. He needed everyone looking the wrong way.
And he was leaving tomorrow.
My phone buzzed on the passenger seat.
It was Emily.
“Mom, where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice eerily calm. The tears were gone. They had been entirely replaced by a cold, sharpened steel in my chest.
“Dad just called me,” Emily said, her voice shaking. “He’s furious. He said you broke into his desk. He said if you don’t agree to the divorce settlement by noon today, he’s going to take the house and leave you with nothing.”
“Tell him I’ll meet him at the house at noon,” I said.
“Mom, no, don't go alone. Andrew is on his way over there right now. He found out about the retirement party. He is out of his mind with rage.”
Andrew.
Robert’s perfect scapegoat.
“Emily, listen to me very carefully,” I said. “Call Andrew. Tell him to pull over and wait for me at the diner on 4th Street. Do not let him go to the house. Robert is setting a trap.”
“A trap? Mom, what is going on?”
“Just do it, Emily. I will explain everything in twenty minutes.”
I hung up and pulled out of Susan’s driveway.
When I arrived at the diner, Andrew was pacing in the parking lot. He looked exactly like the little boy in the photograph, but right now, his face was red with fury.
“Mom!” he yelled, rushing over to my car. “I am going to kill him. I am going to rip his head off.”
“Get in,” I ordered.
He blinked, surprised by my tone. He opened the passenger door and slid in.
I handed him the laptop. I had left the Miami folder open.
“Look at this,” I said.
Andrew stared at the screen. “What is this? Corporate accounts? Shell companies?”
“Your father has been stealing from his firm for four years,” I said. “And he’s fleeing to Costa Rica tomorrow night.”
Andrew’s jaw dropped. “Holy… Mom, we have to call the police.”
“Not yet.” I pointed to the screen. “Look at the name on the Miami shell corporation.”
Andrew squinted at the documents.
His face went completely pale.
The CEO of the shell company was listed as Andrew Hayes.
“He used my name,” Andrew whispered, horrified. “He used my social security number. How?”
“He’s your father,” I said. “He’s had access to your records your whole life.”
“He set me up,” Andrew said, his voice rising in panic. “When the firm audits these accounts, they’re going to trace the missing millions directly to me. I could go to federal prison, Mom. I have a daughter!”
“He was planning to use this against you,” I explained. “If the firm caught on, he was going to say you did it. That you needed the money. And he was going to flee, leaving you holding the bag.”
Andrew dropped his head into his hands. “Oh my god. What do we do?”
“We don't panic,” I said. “Robert thinks he is the smartest man in the room. He thinks I am just a heartbroken, discarded housewife crying over an anniversary ring.”
I reached into my purse and pulled out my grandfather’s pocket watch. I opened it and looked at the photo of Robert, with my sister's handwriting on the back.
“I need to make a phone call,” I said.
May you like
“To the cops?” Andrew asked.
“No,” I said. “To Vanessa.”
