Chapter 6 - the photograph taken after the funeral)
Graham confronted Marianne before dawn.
He placed copies of the bank records on the kitchen table.
Marianne stared at them.
For almost a minute she said nothing.
Then she sat down.
"How much do you know?"
Graham's voice was low.
"Enough to ask you why Helen's foundation paid you eighty thousand dollars before we met."
Marianne looked at Jonah.
"You've been following me."
"Yes."
"Did you follow Helen too?"
"Yes."
That frightened her.
Graham slammed his palm against the table.
"My son is missing."
Marianne flinched.
"So I am going to ask once. Did you have anything to do with Noah disappearing?"
"No."
"Did Helen?"
Marianne began crying.
Graham stepped backward as if her tears offended him.
"Tell me."
"I don't know."
"Tell me everything."
Marianne told him about the payment.
Two years earlier her younger brother Daniel had been arrested for embezzlement at an investment company.
He faced prison.
Then a lawyer approached Marianne with an offer.
Charges could disappear.
Her brother could keep his career.
In exchange, Marianne would accept a position with a Boston arts charity.
She would attend certain events.
Meet certain people.
Report certain conversations.
At first the work seemed like corporate spying.
Then Helen directed her toward Graham.
"You were sent to meet me."
"Yes."
"To do what?"
"Become important to you."
Graham looked physically ill.
"The proposal?"
"Was not part of the assignment."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"No. But it's true."
"What were you supposed to learn?"
"Whether Laura left you anything before she died."
The room became silent.
Graham stared at her.
"What?"
"Documents. Recordings. Financial records. Helen believed Laura discovered something about the foundation."
Jonah stepped forward.
"Why would they need you? Helen already had access to Graham."
"Because Graham stopped trusting Helen after Laura died."
Graham looked away.
That was true.
He had never said it aloud.
Laura and Helen had been best friends since university, but in the months before Laura's death they had argued constantly.
Helen claimed it was about foundation spending.
Laura refused to explain.
After the crash, Graham tolerated Helen because Noah loved her.
But some part of him had remained uneasy.
Marianne continued.
"I was supposed to search Laura's things."
"Did you?"
"Yes."
Graham closed his eyes.
"I found nothing."
"You lied to me every day."
"At first."
"And later?"
Marianne looked directly at him.
"Later I was trying to figure out how to tell you without losing you."
Graham laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
"Convenient."
"I know."
Jonah placed another photograph on the table.
It had been taken from a security camera at the Boston parking garage.
Helen.
Marianne.
Their confrontation.
"What did Helen mean when she said she wasn't the person giving orders?" Jonah asked.
"I don't know."
"Who contacted you originally?"
"A lawyer named Malcolm Rusk."
Graham knew the name.
Rusk had been one of his father's estate attorneys.
He had retired years earlier.
Or claimed to.
Jonah left immediately to find him.
Graham remained with Marianne.
"Did Noah know any of this?"
"I don't think so."
"Did you ever see him near the east hallway?"
Marianne hesitated.
Graham saw it.
"What?"
"Three nights before he disappeared, I found him near the old portrait."
"What was he doing?"
"He hid something behind his back."
"What?"
"I don't know."
Graham remembered the conversation about knocking inside the wall.
A cold feeling moved through him.
He went upstairs.
Noah's room had been searched repeatedly.
Graham searched again.
Under the mattress he found nothing.
In the desk, nothing.
Inside a model airplane, nothing.
Then he noticed a charging cable plugged into the wall beside the bed.
It belonged to a small digital recorder.
The recorder itself was missing.
Graham knew exactly which device used that cable.
Laura's.
He ran to the music room.
The drawer was open.
The recorder was gone.
For the first time since Noah disappeared, Graham stopped thinking like a desperate father and began thinking about what his son might have been trying to tell him.
He crossed the room to Laura's old filing cabinet.
One drawer was locked.
He broke it open.
Inside were tax records and letters.
At the bottom was an envelope with Graham's name.
He opened it.
There was no letter.
Only a photograph.
Laura stood outside a clinic.
The image was blurred.
On the back, written in Laura's handwriting, were six words.
If they say I died, investigate.
May you like
Graham sat down on the floor.
The photograph had been taken twelve days before the crash.
