Chapter 13 - Victor Ward’s Wife
Celeste’s mother was named Diane Ward.
Official cause of death: accidental overdose.
Twenty-one years earlier.
I found the old newspaper article in ten seconds.
Beautiful society wife.
Charity board member.
Found dead in a Georgetown hotel.
No criminal charges.
My father sat at the old kitchen table while I read.
“Did you kill her?”
“No.”
“Did Victor?”
“I don’t know.”
“That answer is getting old.”
My mother said, “Diane called Richard the night she died.”
I looked up.
“She wanted to leave Victor.”
My father stared at the table.
“She said he had learned the truth about Celeste.”
“What truth?”
“That she was mine.”
Detective Brooks leaned against the counter.
“What did Victor do?”
My father said, “He threatened to destroy the company. He already controlled several people around us through the Harbor Account.”
“So you paid him?”
“At first.”
The word sat there.
At first.
“Then what?”
“I built the account into something bigger. I used it too. I convinced myself I could control him.”
“You became him.”
He looked at me.
“Yes.”
That was the first thing he had said all morning that sounded fully true.
Brooks’s phone buzzed.
She read the screen.
“Hospital says Rachel Ward is awake.”
“Ward?”
I looked at her.
Brooks nodded.
“Rachel wasn’t Emily’s sister.”
My mind stopped.
“What?”
“Her prints came back. Rachel Diane Ward.”
Celeste’s half sister.
Victor’s biological daughter.
The woman in the warehouse had lied to me.
Again.
At the hospital, Rachel looked smaller under fluorescent lights.
I stood beside her bed.
“You’re not Emily’s sister.”
“No.”
“Why lie?”
“Because you wouldn’t have listened if I said I was Victor’s daughter.”
“Try me now.”
She closed her eyes.
“My father killed my mother.”
“Can you prove it?”
“No.”
“Then what can you prove?”
She pointed weakly toward a bag of her belongings.
Inside was an old cassette tape.
“My mother recorded everything.”
Brooks found a player through hospital security.
The tape hissed.
Diane Ward’s voice spoke first.
“If something happens to me, Victor did it.”
Then another voice answered.
My father.
“Diane, calm down.”
“I’m taking Celeste.”
“You can’t.”
“I’m her mother.”
“And Victor will kill all of us.”
Diane started crying.
Then came a knock.
A door opened.
May you like
Victor’s voice said, “Going somewhere?”
The tape ended with a scream.
