Chapter 7 - Why Daniel Married Claire
Claire slipped out through the pantry before Daniel entered the dining room.
Rosa stayed behind to delay him.
Evan arranged a private toxicology test through a former lab colleague in Baltimore. By noon, the preliminary result came back.
The residue on the wineglass contained a sedative and a dangerous concentration of a heart medication Eleanor had never been prescribed.
The powder in the soup, according to the police leak Evan obtained, was not the same substance.
Claire stared at the report.
“So Daniel put one substance in the soup. Someone else put another in the wine.”
Evan nodded. “Two hands. Same dinner.”
Claire thought about Martin’s warning.
Why he married you.
She drove to her old apartment building in Alexandria, where she had lived before meeting Daniel.
The building manager remembered him.
“Daniel Whitmore?” Mr. Garcia said. “Sure. He came around before you two started dating.”
Claire frowned. “Before?”
“Months before. Asked whether you still lived here.”
Claire felt the room tilt.
“That’s impossible. We met at a museum fundraiser.”
Mr. Garcia shrugged. “Maybe he knew you already.”
“Did he say why he was looking for me?”
“No. But he had a picture.”
Claire’s skin prickled.
“What picture?”
“Old one. You were younger. Standing next to some man.”
Claire stopped breathing.
Her father.
Thomas Bennett had died when Claire was nineteen in what police called a single-car accident on a wet Virginia road.
He had been a forensic accountant.
And for the last year of his life, he had worked for Whitmore Holdings.
Claire called Evan.
“My father audited Whitmore twenty years ago.”
Silence.
Then Evan said, “Claire, you need to come here.”
“Why?”
“Because I just opened the flash drive from Eleanor’s desk.”
“And?”
“There’s a folder with your father’s name on it.”
Claire gripped the phone.
“What’s inside?”
“A scanned letter he sent Eleanor three days before he died.”
Evan paused.
“He said someone inside Whitmore was laundering money.”
Claire’s voice dropped. “Who?”
May you like
“The initials are M.S.”
Martin Shaw.
