Chapter 4: What Celeste Knew
Grace pulled me into the vestry before I could reach the side door.
It was a small room — dark wood, a row of coat hooks, a folding table with a half-empty coffee urn someone had set up for the wedding party that morning.
The normalcy of it was almost offensive.
"Before you speak to Reyes," Grace said, closing the door behind us, "I need to tell you something."
"Tell me."
"Celeste made three calls in the last twenty minutes.
The first was to Hargrove — that's the family attorney, expected.
The second was to a man named Philip Crane.
He's a private investigator she's used before.
The third—" Grace paused.
"The third was to someone whose number we haven't identified yet.
The call lasted four minutes."
I sat down on the edge of the folding table.
"How do you know this?"
"Because we've had a legal intercept order on her phone since Tuesday." Grace set her folder on the table and opened it.
"Adrian wasn't the only one we were building a case against."
That stopped me.
"Celeste knew about the shell companies?"
"She didn't just know." Grace turned a page.
"Three of the shell companies were originally registered in her name.
She transferred them to Adrian eight years ago, when he turned thirty.
We believe it was a deliberate handoff — she was moving her exposure onto him while keeping access to the profits through a separate trust."
I thought about the morning she had adjusted my sleeve.
The calm, practiced way she had done it.
Not shocked.
Not horrified.
Just tidying.
"She knew what he was doing to me," I said.
"Yes."
"And she helped him build the structure he used to do it."
"The financial structure, yes.
Whether she directed the personal conduct—" Grace chose her words carefully.
"That's harder to prove.
But the fraud exposure is significant."
A knock at the vestry door.
Agent Reyes leaned in.
"Ms.
Calloway?
Ready when you are."
I stood up.
"One more minute."
Reyes nodded and pulled the door mostly closed.
"Grace," I said.
"The fourth call — the one to the unidentified number.
How long ago?"
"She made it while Adrian was being walked out."
"So after she knew it was over."
"Yes."
I thought about the expression on Celeste's face.
Not defeat.
The beginning of a plan.
"She's not trying to save him," I said.
"She's trying to save herself."
Grace looked at me steadily.
"That's what I think too."
I picked up the envelope from the altar — I'd carried it with me without thinking, the way you carry something important without deciding to.
"Then we need to move faster than she does."
Grace almost smiled.
"Already working on it."
I walked out to meet Agent Reyes.
The statement took forty minutes.
I sat in a small office off the church's administrative hallway — someone's desk covered in parish newsletters and a ceramic mug that said BLESSED — and I walked Reyes through eleven months of documentation in the order I had gathered it.
She asked precise questions.
She didn't react to the answers, which told me she already knew most of them.
When I finished, she closed her notebook.
"Ms.
Calloway, how long have you been working with the federal contractor you mentioned in your background?"
"Seven years.
I left when Adrian asked me to."
"He asked you to leave your position?"
"He said it wasn't appropriate for his fiancée to work in financial investigations.
He said it created a conflict of interest." I paused.
"He was right.
Just not in the way he meant."
Reyes looked at me for a moment.
"The ledger you recovered from behind the false wall.
You removed it from the property?"
"I photographed every page in place first.
Then I removed it.
I have the photographs timestamped, the ledger itself, and a chain of custody log I maintained from the day I found it."
She wrote something down.
"You maintained a chain of custody log."
"I worked federal financial investigations for seven years," I said.
"I knew exactly what would be needed."
She nodded slowly.
Then: "Mrs.
Voss — I'm sorry, Ms.
Calloway — are you aware that Celeste Voss placed a call approximately twenty minutes ago to a man named Philip Crane?"
"My attorney mentioned it."
"Mr.
Crane has worked for the Voss family for eleven years.
He has a particular specialty." She let the pause sit for exactly one beat.
"He finds things people want kept hidden.
And he makes things people want found — disappear."
The ceramic mug on the desk said BLESSED.
I looked at it.
"Are you telling me she's going to try to destroy evidence?"
"I'm telling you to be careful," Reyes said.
"And to make sure anything you haven't already handed us is secured somewhere she cannot reach."
I thought about the one thing I hadn't handed over yet.
Not because I'd forgotten it.
Because I'd been saving it.
"There's one more file," I said.
Reyes went very still.
"I didn't include it in the original package because I wanted to understand it fully before I handed it to anyone." I set the manila envelope on the desk between us.
"It's in here.
Page nine.
It's not about Adrian."
She opened the envelope.
Turned to page nine.
Her expression didn't change.
But her hand stopped moving.
"Ms.
Calloway," she said carefully.
"Where did you find this?"
"In a safety deposit box," I said.
"Registered under a name that doesn't exist.
The key was taped to the back of a photograph in Adrian's study.
A photograph of Celeste."
Reyes looked up from the page.
"How long have you had this?"
"Six weeks," I said.
"I needed to be sure."
She closed the envelope.
Set it down.
Picked up her phone and made a call without dialing — a speed dial, someone already waiting.
"We need to expand the warrant," she said into the phone.
"Yes.
Now.
Include the mother."
I stood up.
"Ms.
Calloway." Reyes lowered the phone.
"Don't go anywhere alone tonight.
Is there somewhere safe you can stay?"
I thought of Rosalind, waiting somewhere in the building.
I thought of Grace, already three steps ahead.
"Yes," I said.
But as I reached the door, my own phone lit up on the table where I'd set it.
An unknown number.
A text, not a call.
May you like
Four words.
*You should have left.*
