Chapter 7: The Person Called K
Daniel typed back one word: *Who is this?*
The reply came in under a minute.
*Karen Soll.
I was Nora's roommate before she met you.
I need to tell you something I should have told you three years ago.
Can we meet?*
Daniel looked at the time.
It was almost eleven.
Lily was asleep.
Nora was upstairs.
He typed: *Tomorrow morning.
8am.
Tell me where.*
Karen sent an address.
A coffee shop twenty minutes from the house.
Daniel set the phone down and looked at Paul.
"I need you here tomorrow morning.
Early."
"I'll be here," Paul said.
Daniel went to the kitchen, made coffee he didn't drink, and sat at the table until the house went fully quiet.
When he was certain Nora was no longer moving around upstairs, he took out a notepad and wrote down everything he could remember from the past two years.
The morning he had been sick.
The way Lily had started eating less at the table.
The phone call Marcus had made.
The name Raymond Goss.
The look Marcus had given Nora in the hallway.
He wrote it all down.
Then he went to sleep in the armchair with the notepad on his knee.
---
Karen Soll was already at the coffee shop when Daniel arrived at five past eight.
She was in her early forties, dark-haired, with the look of someone who had rehearsed this conversation several times and was still not sure she was ready for it.
She stood when she saw him.
"Thank you for coming."
"Tell me what you know," Daniel said.
He sat down.
He did not order anything.
Karen wrapped both hands around her mug.
"Nora and I lived together for two years before she met you.
I knew her well.
Maybe better than anyone." She paused.
"When she told me she was getting married, I was happy for her.
But then she told me about the prenuptial agreement.
That you had one.
That she'd signed it."
"She did."
"She told me she signed it because she thought she could get around it." Karen looked up.
"She said — and I remember this exactly because it made me uncomfortable — she said, *if it doesn't work out, there are other ways to make sure I'm not left with nothing.*"
Daniel said nothing.
"I didn't know what she meant.
I told myself it was just frustration talking." Karen's hands tightened around the mug.
"Then about eight months ago, she called me.
She asked me if I still knew a man named Victor.
We had both known him years ago.
He was — he wasn't a good person.
He sourced things.
Pharmaceuticals.
Things you couldn't get through a doctor."
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her I didn't know him anymore.
I told her I didn't want to know what she was asking." Karen's voice dropped.
"But I knew what she was asking.
And I didn't call you.
I didn't call anyone.
And I've been living with that."
Daniel looked at the table.
"Did she find Victor anyway?"
"I think so.
Yes."
"Do you have a last name for him?"
"Victor Crane." Karen reached into her bag and slid a folded piece of paper across the table.
"That's the last address I had for him.
It's a few years old.
But it's something."
Daniel picked up the paper.
He didn't unfold it.
"Why now?" he asked.
"Why tell me this now?"
Karen looked at him directly.
"Because last night Nora sent me a message asking me to say, if anyone asked, that the two of us had dinner together on Thursday evening."
She put her phone on the table.
May you like
The message was still on the screen.
"I'm not going to do that," Karen said.
