Chapter 5: The Woman at Table Four
Her name was Priya.
I found that out the following Tuesday.
She called the restaurant at eleven in the morning, when the kitchen was in prep and the front of house was still quiet.
She asked for me specifically.
When I picked up, she said her name, and then she said: "I think we need to talk."
I said: "Yes.
I think we do."
She came in at two o'clock, after the lunch service had cleared.
She was younger than I had pictured from the photo in the folder — mid-twenties, dark hair pulled back, wearing a plain coat that she held closed in front of her even after she sat down.
She looked at the table when I brought two cups of coffee.
She didn't reach for hers.
"I didn't know he was married," she said.
"Not at first."
"When did you find out?"
"About four months in.
I found a prescription in his bag.
The address was different from where he said he lived.
I looked it up." She pressed her lips together.
"I confronted him.
He said you were separated.
That you'd been living separately for two years."
"We weren't."
"I know that now." She looked up.
"I ended it when I found out.
That was seven weeks ago."
I was quiet for a moment.
"He told me you were still together," I said.
Something moved across her face.
Not surprise.
Something more like the last piece of an answer she had already suspected.
"He came to my apartment twice after I ended it," she said.
"He said he'd told you everything.
That you were working through a divorce.
He said the restaurant was — that there were shared financial arrangements being settled." Her voice dropped slightly.
"He asked if he could transfer some money into my account temporarily.
For safekeeping."
My hands were flat on the table.
"How much?"
She told me.
It was nineteen thousand dollars.
Two transfers.
One in her account for less than a week before she returned it.
The second she had refused entirely.
"I have the bank records," she said.
"And his messages.
All of them.
Including the ones where he told me the restaurant was jointly owned and that he was entitled to half the operating funds during the divorce period."
She reached into her bag and set a folded envelope on the table.
"I came in six weeks ago," she said.
"I lost my nerve.
But I should have done this then."
I picked up the envelope.
"Why are you bringing this to me?" I asked.
"Because he lied to both of us," she said.
"And you're the one who actually got hurt."
I set the envelope down.
I looked at her — this young woman sitting across from me with her coat still held closed, who had driven here to hand me evidence she didn't have to hand me, about a man who had used her as carefully as he had used me.
"Did he ever threaten you?" I asked.
"When you wouldn't cooperate with the second transfer?"
She was quiet for a second too long.
"He said that if I caused problems, he had ways of making things difficult for me.
He knew where I worked.
He said he had friends." She glanced up.
"I don't know if he meant it.
But I believed him enough to be careful."
I pushed her coffee cup closer to her.
"Drink that," I said.
"And then I'm going to give you my attorney's phone number."
"I don't need—"
"His messages constitute witness tampering and attempted coercion.
My attorney will want your records.
And you should have someone in your corner if this goes further than a civil case."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"You're being very kind," she said.
"I didn't expect that."
"He counted on us not talking to each other," I said.
"That's the only reason any of this worked as long as it did."
She picked up the coffee cup.
She didn't say anything else for a moment.
Neither did I.
Then she said: "The apartment on Kettner.
He asked me to move in.
I said no.
I want you to know I said no."
"I believe you."
She set the cup down.
"What happens now?" she asked.
"Now," I said, "my attorney gets your records.
And Lucas answers to a great deal more than a restaurant bill."
Her phone lit up on the table between us.
She turned it over without looking at it.
Outside, the afternoon light was coming through the front windows of Lumina the way it always did at two o'clock — long and warm across the wooden floors.
I had chosen those floors myself.
I had sanded them twice before I was happy.
I looked at the envelope.
Everything Lucas had told Priya was documented in her phone.
May you like
And her phone was about to become the most important piece of evidence in the case against my husband.
What I did not know yet was that Beatrice had spent the weekend making calls of her own — and that one of those calls had gone to someone inside my building.
