Chapter 7: The Cousin Who Ran
Richard arrived twenty minutes later.
He was a compact man in an expensive suit who assessed the room in about four seconds and immediately pulled Lauren into the hallway.
Reeves let them go.
He sat down at the table, accepted a glass of water from Daniel, and waited.
Emma had fallen asleep against her mother's shoulder.
Not from boredom — from exhaustion, the kind that comes after a long time of being afraid and then, suddenly, not having to be anymore.
Her mother hadn't moved.
She sat with one arm around Emma and her phone on the table in front of her, the recording already transferred to Reeves's secure line.
Daniel sat across from Diane.
He hadn't spoken in several minutes.
"How long did you work here?" he asked her finally.
"Three years," Diane said.
"And you left because of what you saw."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you go to the police then?"
Diane looked at him steadily.
"I did.
They told me I needed documentation.
I didn't have any yet." She paused.
"And I was afraid of what Lauren would do.
She had already called my references.
She had already started." A pause.
"I needed time to gather what I had.
And then I needed to find someone to give it to who wouldn't make it disappear."
Daniel was quiet for a moment.
"I didn't know," he said.
"I believe you," Diane said.
That seemed to cost him something to hear.
He looked down at the table.
In the hallway, Lauren's voice rose briefly and then dropped again.
Richard's voice, lower, steadier, ran underneath hers like a current.
Reeves took out a small notebook.
"Ms.
Diane," he said, "when did you first become aware of the account opened in the previous employee's name — Carol Simmons?"
"About ten months after I started," Diane said.
"I was filing household documents and I found a bank statement that didn't match any account I knew about.
Lauren's name wasn't on it.
A woman's name I didn't recognize was.
But the address was this house."
"Did you ask Lauren about it?"
"I did.
She told me it was a family account and it wasn't my concern." Diane's hands were folded on the table.
"Two weeks later she told me my position was being eliminated.
She gave me a month's notice and a reference letter." A pause.
"The reference letter was fine.
It was the calls she made after I left that weren't."
Reeves wrote something down.
The hallway went quiet.
Then Lauren came back in, Richard a half-step behind her.
"My client would like to make a statement," Richard said.
Reeves looked up.
"All right."
Lauren stood at the edge of the room.
She looked at Reeves and not at anyone else.
"Pauline handled my personal accounts," she said.
"I gave her access because I trusted her.
If she used that access to open fraudulent accounts in other people's names, she did that without my knowledge or my authorization."
"Lauren," Daniel said.
"I am telling the truth," Lauren said.
Her voice was controlled now, shaped by Richard's coaching.
"Whatever Pauline did, she did on her own.
I am as much a victim here as anyone."
Emma's mom looked up from the sleeping child against her shoulder.
"She threatened my daughter," she said.
"That was your voice on the recording.
Not Pauline's."
Lauren's jaw tightened.
"That was a private conversation taken out of context by a child who—"
"Lauren." Richard's voice was quiet and sharp.
She stopped.
Reeves closed his notebook.
He stood up.
"Ms.
Marsh-Colton, I'm going to need you to come in and give a formal statement.
You're not under arrest.
But I do need that statement, and I need it today." He looked at Richard.
"I trust that won't be a problem."
"We'll be there at four," Richard said.
Reeves nodded.
He looked around the room one last time — at Diane, at Emma's mom, at the sleeping child — and then he looked at the table where the photographs still lay.
"One more thing," he said.
"Pauline Marsh.
If either of you hears from her—" he was looking at Lauren and Daniel both "—you call me immediately.
Do not speak to her first.
Do not warn her.
Call me."
"We understand," Daniel said.
Lauren said nothing.
Reeves gathered his folder and left.
The room exhaled.
Lauren looked at her husband.
He was looking at the photographs still on the table — Pauline at the bank counter, Pauline's hand on a pen, Pauline signing a name that wasn't hers.
"She ran," Lauren said.
Her voice had gone hollow.
"She actually ran."
"Did you know she was going to?" Daniel asked.
The pause was a fraction too long.
"No," Lauren said.
Daniel picked up the photographs and handed them to Richard without looking at his wife.
"I think," he said, "you and I need to speak to Richard separately."
Lauren stared at him.
"Daniel—"
"Separately," he said again.
And he walked out of the room.
Emma stirred against her mother's shoulder.
She didn't wake up.
She just turned her face slightly, the way children do when they sense a shift in the air around them, and settled again.
Her mother pressed her lips to the top of Emma's head and stayed very still.
Diane reached across the table and put her hand over Emma's mom's hand.
She didn't say anything.
May you like
She just left it there.
And in the hallway, Lauren stood alone with her attorney, and the house that had felt like a fortress an hour ago now felt like something else entirely.
