Chapter 7 - THE CRACKING FOUNDATION
Daniel’s eyes dilated with a sudden, violent spasm of terror. His hand flew to his stomach, pressing hard against the dull ache that had kept him tossing and turning for four hours.
“What did you say?” he choked out.
“The bitters,” I said, stepping around the desk, keeping the heavy mahogany furniture between us. “You told me they were good for digestion, Daniel. Did you think three drops of copper sulfate and sodium selenite would taste any different in your Cabernet than it did in mine?”
He lurched forward, his face turning an ashen, sickly gray. “You poisoned me?”
“I didn't poison you,” I snapped, my voice ringing with cold fury. “I just let you drink the prescription you wrote for me. You’ve been giving it to me for four months, haven't you? How does it feel? Does it burn? Does it feel like an aggressive malignancy, Daniel?”
He stumbled against the leather armchair, collapsing into it with a ragged groan. Panic—real, uncalculated panic—contorted his handsome features into a grotesque mask.
“It wasn't... it wasn't supposed to be like this,” he gasped, his breath coming in shallow, frantic wheezes. “The firm was drowning, Claire. The bank called the note on the Riverside project. Three million dollars. If I didn't find liquidity, I was going to prison for bank fraud. They were going to take everything. Hawthorne Lane. My father’s tools. Everything.”
“So you decided to take my life instead?”
“You weren't supposed to suffer!” he cried out, tears finally breaking through his eyes, though they were tears of self-pity, not remorse. “Evelyn found the loophole. The insurance policy had an expedited terminal payout clause. If the diagnosis came from an accredited facility, the money cleared in thirty days. You didn't even have to die right away! We just needed the claim approved!”
“And then?” I demanded, stepping closer, my voice cutting through his pathetic whimpers. “What were you going to do after the two million cleared, Daniel? Were you going to nurse me back to health? Or were you going to increase the drops until my liver actually shut down, so the insurance investigators wouldn't ask why the terminal patient miraculously recovered?”
He couldn't look at me. He turned his face into the leather of the chair, his shoulders shaking with silent, guilty spasms.
His silence was the loudest confession in the world.
He was going to kill me. If not today, then three months from now, when the money was safely wired into Apex Trust. He was going to weep at my graveside, accept casseroles from the neighbors on Hawthorne Lane, and then fly to Nashville with Evelyn to build his new empire on the bones of the woman who had spent nine years keeping his home.
“Call an ambulance,” he whimpered, clutching his ribs. “Claire, please. The copper... it burns. Call an ambulance.”
“I’ll call someone,” I said, pulling my phone from my pocket. “But it won't be an ambulance.”
I hit speed dial.
“Sarah,” I said into the speaker. “Send them in.”
The front door of our house didn't open politely. It swung inward with a heavy, concussive bang.
Footsteps pounded down the hardwood hallway—heavy, tactical, and numerous. Two uniformed officers from the Columbus Police Department entered the study with their hands on their holsters, followed immediately by a detective in a gray wool trench coat and Sarah, who held her phone high, recording every square inch of the room.
“Daniel Bennett?” the detective barked, stepping over the threshold. “I’m Detective Miller, Columbus Major Crimes. Put your hands where I can see them.”
Daniel looked up, his face twisted in agonized shock. “What... what is this?”
“It’s the end of your contract,” I said quietly.
Detective Miller stepped forward, pulling a pair of steel handcuffs from his belt. “We have your financial partner, Evelyn Cross, in custody down at the precinct. She started talking about twenty minutes ago, Mr. Bennett. Seems she didn't want to go down for attempted aggravated murder and wire fraud alone.”
As the steel cuffs clicked around Daniel’s wrists, he looked up at me, his eyes filled with a desperate, pleading horror.
“Claire,” he sobbed, the tears streaming down his gray cheeks. “Claire, please. I loved you. I swear to God, I loved you!”
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I looked down at the man I had shared twelve years with. The man who had promised to build two rocking chairs beneath the maple tree in our backyard.
“You didn't love me, Daniel,” I whispered, watching as the officers hauled him to his feet. “You just loved the convenience of having an archivist who didn't read between the lines.”
