Chapter 7 — THE TAPE

I spent two days trying not to imagine it.

That is not a thing a person can actually do.

Every quiet minute offered a new version.

Had somebody recorded my wife crying?

Complaining about me?

Saying something at two in the morning that she would never say at two in the afternoon?

Had they edited it?

Had they walked her into saying it?

The reasonable part of me understood the tape was almost certainly another instrument in the same toolbox.

The other part did not care in the slightest.

Roland Fisk had built the whole scheme around the oldest structural weakness in any marriage.

Doubt.

If you can make two people uncertain about each other, they will do the rest of the demolition themselves.

Nora noticed I had gone somewhere else.

On Wednesday night, after Silas went down, she sat on the arm of the sofa.

"You're thinking about it."

I did not bother pretending.

"Yes."

"So am I."

I looked up at her.

"Is there anything on any recording anywhere that would frighten you?"

She thought about it properly, which I appreciated.

"I've complained about your mother."

"That would not shock me."

"I've complained about you."

"Also not a shock."

A small smile went between us and left again.

"I told Miles once that I felt trapped."

My chest tightened.

"Trapped with me?"

"In the situation."

"In this house all day."

"Your mother here constantly."

"You gone twelve hours."

"No sleep for four months."

She put her hand on my arm.

"I love you."

"But there were days last winter when I hated my life."

I nodded.

"You were allowed to."

She looked relieved in a way that told me she had been carrying that sentence for a while.

"Maybe they recorded that."

"Then we deal with it."

"There's something else."

My stomach went tight.

"What."

"Your mother tried to get me talking about divorce."

I stared at her.

"When?"

"About ten weeks ago."

"What did she say?"

"She asked what I would do if you ever cheated on me."

"Out of nowhere?"

"Completely."

"Then she asked whether I'd take Silas back to my parents in Beaufort."

"What did you say?"

"That I'd never keep you from your son."

"And?"

"She kept going."

"She asked whether I'd want half the house."

"What did you tell her?"

"That I'd never thought about it."

Nora's face hardened.

"And she said I should."

I understood then.

My mother had been fishing for sentences.

Not opinions.

Sentences.

Things that could be lifted out and rearranged.

Raines called the next morning.

The digital team had been into the tablet and the laptop.

They had recovered deleted messages.

Hundreds.

Some between Vivian and Fisk.

Some between Fisk and Trent.

Some between Vivian and Corinne.

My aunt.

I had suspected she knew more than she was admitting in my kitchen.

Now there was a record of it.

Raines asked us both to come in.

Margo met us there.

The first messages were almost boring.

My mother complaining about the state of the house.

Corinne being unpleasant about the price of organic baby food.

Fisk reminding my mother to keep the subject focused.

The subject.

That was the word he used for me.

Then it stopped being boring.

Fisk:

Ethan has to believe she is careless with money before any separation conversation.

Vivian:

That will not be difficult.

She spent ninety dollars on a nappy bag.

Corinne:

I can bring it up at dinner.

Another exchange, two weeks later.

Vivian:

She will not sign the management authorisation.

Fisk:

Then we proceed without it.

Vivian:

Does that create a problem?

Fisk:

Only if Ethan challenges it afterwards.

Vivian:

He won't.

Raines stopped scrolling there.

"Your mother sounds very confident that you would side with her."

I looked at the screen for a while.

"She had thirty-four years of evidence."

Nobody said anything to that.

Then another one came up.

Corinne:

What about the recording?

Fisk:

Not yet.

Vivian:

Save it for when we need her gone.

Nora's hand closed round mine.

Her gone.

That is how they talked about my wife in writing.

Raines opened another folder on the screen.

"We recovered audio files."

My stomach dropped.

"Is it there?"

"There's a file named N FINAL."

Nora breathed in.

"Play it."

I looked at her.

"You're sure?"

"I'm tired of being frightened of something I've never heard."

Raines pressed play.

My wife's voice came out of a police laptop speaker.

I can't keep living like this.

A pause.

Some days I think I should just take Silas and go.

My chest tightened despite everything I knew.

Then it kept going.

Ethan doesn't listen any more.

He cares more about keeping his mother happy than about protecting me.

I looked at Nora.

Her eyes had filled.

"I said that."

"When?"

"To Miles. In February."

The file ran on.

If I left, I'd make sure Ethan paid for all of it.

I'd take the house if I had to.

Nora made a small sound.

"I have never said that in my life."

Raines paused it.

"You're certain."

"Completely."

She rewound eight seconds and played it again.

The voice was my wife's.

But the rhythm changed halfway through the sentence.

Margo leaned forward.

"That's spliced."

Raines nodded.

"Our examiner says the same."

She turned the screen so we could see the waveform.

The last sentence had been assembled out of three separate pieces.

Nora closed her eyes.

"They made it sound like I wanted the house and the baby."

"Yes."

And I felt something I did not expect.

Calm.

Maybe because the worst thing in the box had finally been opened, and it turned out to be exactly what everyone said it was.

Manufactured.

"Where did the source audio come from?"

Raines answered.

"Several places."

"The tablet."

"A smart speaker."

"And at least one phone left recording on a worktop."

I stared at her.

"Our speaker?"

"It appears your mother had access to the linked account."

And I remembered setting it up.

She had asked me to add her so she could put music on for the baby while Nora napped.

It took me forty seconds.

"Could she listen from her house?"

"In some configurations, recordings and drop-ins can be accessed."

"I am not saying she sat there listening all day."

"But she had a great deal more access than you understood."

Nora looked physically unwell.

I thought about our private conversations being collected like offcuts.

Arguments.

Exhausted midnight admissions.

All of it filed and waiting to be cut into whatever shape Roland Fisk needed.

Raines played the source files.

One was Nora on the phone to her brother.

"I can't keep living like this if she's in my kitchen every single day."

Another was a conversation about money.

"If I went back to work, Ethan would probably tell me to keep my own paycheck."

And another.

"If we ever moved, we'd take whatever equity there was and buy somewhere smaller."

Fisk had taken the pieces.

If I left.

Ethan.

Paid.

Take.

House.

Under a forensic microscope it was crude.

Emotionally, it would have worked.

Especially if my mother had played it to me in the middle of an argument.

Especially if I had already been fed six months of photographs of my wife's spending.

That was the design.

The tape never had to survive an examination.

It only had to end a marriage before anybody thought to examine it.

Margo asked about Corinne.

"Is she being interviewed?"

Raines nodded.

"She says she believed this was about protecting Vivian financially."

"Did she know about the forged documents?"

"She denies it."

The messages said otherwise.

One from my aunt read:

If Ethan asks about the signature, tell him he did it at Christmas after the bourbon.

I stared at it.

"That is not ambiguous."

"No," Raines said. "It is not."

I wanted arrests.

Charges.

Something with a date on it.

What I got was process.

Again.

But something else had come out of Fisk's messages.

A photograph.

A conference table.

Site plans.

Financial projections.

A rendering of a marina with white boats drawn on it.

I recognised the drawing immediately.

Palmetto Point.

The date stamp was seven months old.

Three people at the table.

My mother.

Roland Fisk.

And a third man.

Silver hair.

Very expensive suit.

A gold ring with a black stone on his right hand.

The man my sister had described.

"Who is he?"

Raines slid another photograph across.

"Hollis Deane."

The name was familiar.

Not personally.

From work.

Hollis Deane is a coastal developer with a reputation for buying distressed waterfront cheaply and pushing very aggressive numbers at investors.

"Deane Coastal Group."

Raines nodded.

I stared at his face.

"My firm did the flood review for that company."

"When?"

"Two years ago."

"We concluded the site could not be insured at the premiums they were quoting."

"Did you meet him?"

"Once."

"He was not pleased with us."

"Why not?"

"Because he already had investors in the room."

"Our numbers ended the financing."

Margo sat back.

"So Mr Deane had a specific reason to dislike your professional conclusions."

I remembered the meeting suddenly and completely.

Deane leaning across the table telling me that adjusters exaggerate risk because we do not understand business.

Me telling him the water does not care what anybody understands.

He had laughed.

Not in a friendly way.

"What does he want with my mother?"

Raines showed us recovered messages.

Fisk to Vivian:

Deane needs closing capital by 30 September.

Vivian:

Ethan's house will cover it.

Fisk:

Not on its own.

We need Delia's interest and the rest of your portfolio.

Vivian:

Ethan will sign once the wife is out of the picture.

My throat closed.

Nora said, very quietly, "All of this was for a marina."

Raines said, "Possibly."

And I thought about my father's letter.

Roland Fisk had approached my parents about combining assets seven years ago.

Palmetto Point was only the latest name on the same idea.

"What did my father actually invest in?"

"We're tracing it."

Then Raines turned another page toward me.

A wire transfer.

Six years old.

Three hundred and sixty-four thousand dollars.

Out of my father's beneficiary account, ten weeks after he died.

Destination: Fisk Coastal Opportunities Fund.

Delia would have made a sound if she had been in the room.

The fund no longer exists.

Public filings show it wound up four years ago.

"Where did it go after that?" Margo asked.

Raines turned another page.

"Much of it moved through three investment entities."

"A portion eventually reached a company controlled by Hollis Deane."

And I understood the whole thing in one slow, unpleasant motion.

My mother had let Roland Fisk move our inheritance.

Maybe she believed it was an investment.

Maybe she knew precisely what she was doing.

Either way, the money was now standing underneath a marina that could not be insured, and the only way to get it back was to borrow against my house.

Then Raines said, "There's one more audio file."

I looked up.

"Another fake?"

"No."

"This one appears to be a genuine recorded meeting."

"Between?"

"Your mother and Fisk."

"When?"

"Five months ago."

She played it.

Fisk first.

If Ethan sees the Palmetto numbers, we have a problem.

My mother.

He won't.

Fisk.

He wrote the flood report. He'll know that land is not worth what Deane says it is.

Vivian.

Then don't let him see it.

Fisk.

We need his equity.

Vivian.

I can manage my son.

And Fisk laughed.

Quietly.

Then he said:

You said that about Arthur as well.

My blood stopped moving.

Arthur.

My father.

My mother's voice changed completely.

Do not talk about my husband.

Fisk.

I'm only reminding you that family loyalty has a limit.

Vivian.

Arthur was different.

Fisk.

Arthur started asking questions.

The recording ended there.

I looked at Detective Raines.

"What does that mean."

She did not answer me.

And I sat in a police station in Charleston replaying four words while the air conditioning ticked.

Arthur started asking questions.

My father died of a heart attack.

At home.

In his own kitchen.

And for the first time in six years, I found myself wondering what questions he had been asking in the week before it happened.