Chapter 6: What Celeste Knew
I stepped back from the door and let her in.
She sat in the chair by the window, not the bed.
She kept her robe pulled tight.
Outside, frogs called from somewhere near the water's edge, and from the far end of the lodge the low rhythm of Julian's voice moved through the wall.
He was still on the phone.
Celeste watched the door for a moment.
Then she looked at me.
"How much do you actually know?" she asked.
"Enough," I said.
"Tell me the rest."
She pulled in a breath through her nose.
"I didn't know it was going to be the river.
I want you to understand that.
I thought—" She stopped.
Started again.
"Julian talked about it in abstract terms for a long time.
An accident.
A situation where control of the company would transfer.
He made it sound like something that would happen naturally, that he and Richard would simply be positioned to respond to it."
"How long has this been planned?"
"In some form?
Eighteen months." She looked at her hands.
"In the specific form it took today?
I found out two weeks ago.
The night Richard said what he said at dinner — about nature deciding things.
After you went to bed, Julian and Richard stayed at the table for another two hours.
I heard most of it through the kitchen wall." She paused.
"I did not hear all of it.
But I heard enough to understand what kind of trip this was."
The frogs outside kept calling.
I sat very still.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.
She looked up.
"Because I told Julian I would not." A beat.
"And because I was afraid of what he would do if I did.
Julian is not—" She chose her words carefully.
"Julian has a very particular way of managing people who become problems for him."
"I know," I said.
"I raised him."
That landed in the room and sat there between us.
"I should have told you," Celeste said.
"I know that.
I have known it every day for two weeks.
But I told myself there were ways to stop it that didn't require me to—" She made a small gesture with her hand.
"I was wrong.
And when you went over that railing today, I stood on that deck and did nothing, and I have to live with that."
"You will live with it," I said.
"What I need to know right now is what else you heard through that kitchen wall."
Celeste reached into the pocket of her robe.
She placed a folded piece of paper on the table between us.
"The morning we left for the Amazon," she said, "I found this in the pocket of Julian's travel jacket when I was looking for a charging cable.
I photographed it on my phone before I put it back.
I printed this copy at the lodge business center this afternoon while Julian and Richard were speaking to the police."
I unfolded it.
It was a single page.
A legal summary — not formal letterhead, but clearly drafted by someone who understood corporate succession law precisely.
It outlined an emergency board protocol for Thorne Meridian: in the event of the founder's death or incapacitation without a recent succession amendment, interim executive control would transfer to the existing senior family board member.
It cited clause numbers.
It referenced a supplementary document that had apparently been prepared alongside it.
At the bottom, in handwriting I recognized from eleven years of legal correspondence, was a single annotation: *V.H.
— confirmed viable.
Proceed on confirmation of event.*
V.H.
Victor Hargrove.
I refolded the paper.
"Does Julian know you have this?"
"No."
"Does Richard?"
"No."
I looked at her.
"Celeste.
In the morning, Delegado Ferreira is going to want to speak with everyone again.
When that happens, I need you to tell him exactly what you told me.
All of it.
The conversation through the kitchen wall.
The document.
The two weeks you had this information."
She was quiet for a moment.
"If I do that, Julian will—"
"Julian," I said, "is going to face consequences regardless of what you do tomorrow.
The question is whether you face them with him or separately from him.
That decision is entirely yours.
But you should make it with clear information."
She looked at the window.
At the dark water somewhere beyond the trees.
"There is something else," she said.
"Tell me."
"Victor Hargrove was not the only person Richard called today." She turned back to me.
"Before the police arrived — before you came out of the bedroom the second time — Richard made a second call.
I was close enough to hear the name."
She said the name.
I felt it land somewhere in the center of my chest like a stone dropping into still water.
It was the name of Thorne Meridian's Chairman of the Board.
My oldest friend.
The man who had stood beside me when I founded the company.
The man who had given a speech at my sixtieth birthday calling me the most remarkable person he had ever known.
May you like
Gerald Fitch had taken Richard's call.
And he had stayed on the line for eleven minutes.
