Chapter 17
The letter went out by certified mail to Richard Hale and Connor Hale that same afternoon.
Patricia's assistant sent me a copy by email while I was still driving home.
I pulled over on the highway outside of town and read it in my car, parked on the gravel shoulder with the pines on both sides and the mountains above them.
It was a precise document.
Measured.
Completely without anger.
It said exactly what needed to be said, and nothing more.
I set my phone on the passenger seat and kept driving.
Twelve days later, Richard Hale called my cell phone.
I was in my kitchen in Spokane when the call came in.
I let it ring once, then picked up.
"I got the letter," he said.
"I assumed you had."
"We want to resolve this."
"You have two days left in your window."
A pause.
"The money is ready.
All of it."
"Patricia Oakes handles everything from this point forward," I said.
"Contact her office, not me."
I heard him exhale slowly on the other end of the line.
It was the exhale of a man who had expected more room to negotiate and found none.
"Diane," he said.
"For the family—"
"Call Patricia's office, Richard." I kept my voice pleasant.
"Today, if possible."
I ended the call.
He called Patricia's office forty minutes later.
* * *
# CHAPTER 9: What Fourteen Thousand Dollars Actually Cost
The wire transfer cleared on a Thursday.
Patricia called me from her office.
"Fourteen thousand, plus the platform fees they collected but hadn't initially disclosed.
Final figure is sixteen thousand, two hundred and forty dollars."
"There were additional fees?"
"Three hundred dollars per booking in platform commissions that never appeared in their initial accounting.
We found them in the transaction records they were required to provide." A brief pause.
May you like
"They were hoping you wouldn't ask for the full accounting.
I asked."
