“Why did you choose me?”
Regina’s face tightened.
“Because I knew you were discreet.
Because you already worked close to me.
Because you weren’t connected to my family.”
She paused.
“And because I knew about your mother.”
There it was.
The ugliest part.
Not murder.
Not conspiracy.
Something smaller and more personal.
She had known exactly how desperate I was.
“You knew I couldn’t say no.”
“I knew you were running out of options.”
“That’s not better.”
“I know.”
I stood so quickly the chair scraped across the floor.
Regina didn’t reach for me.
“I told myself I was giving you a choice,” she said.
“But I chose someone who needed the money badly enough to accept conditions a person with choices would have questioned.
I won’t pretend that was kind.”
“Did you know Patrick might come after me?”
Her silence returned.
I felt something inside me collapse.
“Regina.”
“I thought if you knew nothing, you wouldn’t be dangerous to him.”
“Julian knew nothing at first too.”
“I know.”
Julian’s mother pushed the red envelope toward me.
“There’s one more thing.”
Inside was a small audio recorder.
Julian had recorded a voice memo the night before his death.
His voice sounded tired, almost embarrassed to be frightened.
He named the vendor accounts.
He said Patrick had confronted him about taking copies.
Then he said a sentence that made Regina close her eyes.
“If anything happens to me before the twelve months are over, don’t let them call it bad luck.”
The recording ended.
Nobody spoke.
Finally I asked the question that had been sitting in my chest since the parking garage.
“Why come tonight?”
Julian’s mother looked at me.
“Because Patrick knows you’re asking about Julian.
And because somebody followed you home from the office.”
Regina was already reaching for her phone.
I stopped her.
“No family lawyer.”
She looked at me.
“Outside counsel,” I said.
“And the police.
People Patrick doesn’t employ, intimidate, or eat dinner with.”
For once, Regina Albright did exactly what I told her.
Before midnight, copies of Julian’s records, the financial documents, and the preserved medical report were in hands outside the Albright family.
Regina finally unlocked the room at the end of the hallway.
I had expected something dramatic.
