Chapter 8: What Strickland Said Before He Left
They kept Claire at the table for another two hours.
Not against her will — because Patricia kept asking questions and Ruth kept producing documents and Ellie fell asleep in her chair at some point with her cheek on her folded arms, and Claire didn't want to move her.
The investigators spoke to Daniel in a room off the main corridor for forty-five minutes.
Claire knew this because Strickland came out after twenty minutes, walked directly to the lobby table, and sat down across from Patricia with the leather folder open in front of him.
"My client is cooperating with the inquiry," he said.
"That's his choice to make," Patricia said.
Strickland looked at Claire.
The professionally warm tone was gone.
What replaced it wasn't cold exactly — more like careful.
The way someone speaks when they have begun to understand which side the weight is on.
"The terms I presented earlier are no longer on the table," he said.
"I'm aware."
"Any future resolution will depend on the scope of the state's interest." He paused.
"I want to be direct with you, Mrs.
Harrison.
What is happening in that room—" he gestured toward the corridor — "is likely to move quickly.
And when it does, the picture of the company and its assets is going to be examined in detail.
Your documented involvement in the founding period—" he gestured toward the envelopes on the table — "will become very relevant to the question of equitable interest."
Patricia looked at him over her glasses.
"Is this advice?"
"It's an observation."
"From opposing counsel."
"From someone who has read what's on this table and understands that the October fourteenth document is going to have a difficult time surviving the next few weeks." He stood up.
He looked at Claire one last time.
"Your mother was a careful woman."
He left without looking back.
Claire watched him go.
Then she looked at Patricia.
"What does that mean?"
"It means Strickland is smart enough to know the document won't hold." Patricia was already writing.
"Fraudulent inducement.
Manufactured urgency.
Contradictory representations.
A witnessed statement from a third party.
A personal loan secured against an asset he obtained through that document." She looked up.
"And a financial crimes investigator in the next room."
"Will they arrest him?"
"That depends on what he tells them tonight and what they already have." Patricia capped her pen.
"But Claire — regardless of what happens in that corridor — we have more than enough to pursue the invalidity of that document through civil action and to establish your rightful ownership stake in the company." She paused.
"What Daniel did was systematic.
It was planned around your most vulnerable moment.
And your mother made sure there was a record."
Claire looked at Ellie — still asleep, one hand resting open on the table near the silver purse.
"She planned this for four years," Claire said.
"My mother.
She gave Ellie the letter and the envelope and the USB drive and she — she prepared all of it and she never said a word to me."
"She didn't want to burden you," Ruth said gently.
"She told me that.
She said — if it comes to nothing and Daniel is just a man making bad choices, then Claire can grieve me in peace.
But if it comes to something, then at least she won't face it empty-handed."
Claire pressed her hand over her mouth for a moment.
Then she lowered it.
"She knew," Claire said.
"She knew he was going to try to take it."
"She suspected.
She hoped she was wrong." Ruth looked at the letter on the table.
"She loved you very much.
And she loved that child." A pause.
"She said Ellie had a mind like a steel trap in a velvet glove.
She said it with great pride."
Claire looked at her daughter.
The door to the corridor opened.
One of the investigators walked out and toward the hotel exit without looking at anyone.
The second one came out a moment later and stopped near the lobby table.
"Mrs.
Harrison?"
"Yes."
"We'll be in touch in the next few days.
Please don't leave the state." He glanced at the table — the envelopes, the letter, the document, the pearls.
He didn't ask about any of it.
"Have a safe evening."
He walked out.
The ballroom had gone quiet.
Most of the guests had left.
A hotel employee was stacking chairs somewhere inside.
The chandelier light through the open doors fell in a long pale shape across the lobby floor.
Daniel came out of the corridor last.
He stopped when he saw Claire.
He looked older than he had on the stage.
Whatever the investigators had said to him — or he had said to them — had taken something out of him that wasn't coming back tonight.
He walked toward her slowly.
Ellie didn't wake up.
He stopped at the edge of the table.
He looked at the pearls.
He looked at his daughter asleep in the chair.
He looked at Claire.
"I told myself it was necessary," he said.
"For the company.
For the future."
"For Lauren."
He didn't deny it.
"I told myself you'd be taken care of.
That I'd make sure of it." He looked at the table.
"I believed that.
I think I believed that."
"You had my mother's dying weeks to talk yourself into it," Claire said.
"I hope it was a convincing argument."
He had no answer to that.
"Go home, Daniel." Her voice wasn't angry.
It was just done.
"Or wherever it is you're going.
Don't come to the house tonight."
He stood there one moment more.
Then he left.
The revolving door turned once behind him and stopped.
Patricia closed her notepad.
Ruth began putting the documents back carefully.
Ellie shifted in her chair and made a small sound.
Claire reached over and rested her hand lightly on her daughter's hair.
The pearls were still on the table.
She picked them up.
May you like
She held them in her palm — the weight of them, the familiar cool smoothness, the small gray mark her mother had pointed to on a screen in front of three hundred people who had come to celebrate a different story.
She closed her hand around them.
