Chapter 9: What She Came Back For
I told Gavin to let her wait outside.
Then I finished the meeting with Grace, which took another thirty minutes, and drove back to Lumina.
Beatrice was still there.
She was standing on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant in a cream-colored coat, holding her bag with both hands, looking at the closed door with the expression of someone who had knocked on it several times and found the experience surprising.
I parked and walked toward her.
She turned when she heard my footsteps.
"We need to talk," she said.
"We've said most of what there is to say."
"Not about this." She glanced at the street.
At the passing pedestrians.
She had never cared about witnesses before.
That she cared now told me something.
"Can we go inside?"
"No."
Her jaw tightened.
"Then here." She stepped closer.
Her voice dropped.
"I know what Grace Mercer filed last week.
My son told me.
And I need you to understand that if this goes forward — the criminal filing — Lucas will not be the only one whose name appears."
"I know."
She blinked.
"You know."
"Three of the wire transfers include a secondary recipient.
Your account, Beatrice.
Two thousand dollars in March.
Fifteen hundred in August.
Those weren't gifts from your son.
They came from Lumina's operating account."
She said nothing.
"You knew about the transfers," I said.
"You knew about the apartment.
You coached Lucas on what to tell me when I asked about the account discrepancies.
And you received money from a business you had no entitlement to.
That makes you a participant.
Not just a bystander."
"I never asked him for that money—"
"It doesn't matter whether you asked.
It matters whether you received it and kept it.
And whether you knew where it came from."
Her chin went up.
"You are making a very serious mistake," she said.
"I have been in this family for thirty years.
I have connections in this city that you haven't even begun to understand.
You think a folder and a lawyer are going to be enough?"
"I think the DA's office will decide what's enough."
"You would really do this?" Her voice shifted.
Not softer, exactly, but smaller.
"You would really take this all the way?
After everything — after all the years?
For money?"
"It was never about money," I said.
"It was about you walking into my restaurant for three years and treating it like you owned it.
It was about Lucas taking eighty-seven thousand dollars from the accounts I built to fund a life he was hiding from me.
It was about sitting in the room while you told thirty-eight people that my husband's affair was funny." I looked at her.
"The money is just the part that has a legal remedy."
Something moved across her face.
It was not guilt.
But it was something adjacent to it — a recognition, maybe, that she had finally collided with a wall she had not seen coming because she had never believed I was capable of building one.
"What do you want?" she said.
"Tell me what you want and let's end this."
"I want the investigation to proceed," I said.
"I want the court to see the full financial record.
And I want you to never set foot in this restaurant again."
"And if Lucas cooperates?
If he pays back everything?
Would you consider—"
"That conversation is between Lucas and his attorney and the DA's office.
It has nothing to do with me anymore."
She stared at me.
"You were always going to do this," she said.
"From the moment I walked in on Friday.
You had already decided."
"I had already decided in January," I said.
"When I opened the account statements and understood what I was looking at.
Friday was just when you gave me the audience."
She stood there for another moment.
The cream-colored coat.
The tight grip on her bag.
The sidewalk between us.
Then she said, very quietly: "Lucas is my son."
"I know he is," I said.
"And he's going to need a very good attorney and a great deal of humility.
But that's not something I can give him."
I unlocked the front door of Lumina and stepped inside.
I did not look back to see how long she stood there.
Gavin was at the host station.
He looked at me.
"Well?" he said.
May you like
"Set up for service," I said.
"We open in two hours."
