Chapter 5 - The Dead Accountant
The dead man’s name was Peter Kline.
He was forty-six, divorced, and chief forensic accountant for Moretti Holdings.
I had met him twice. Quiet man. Bad tie. Always carried peppermint gum.
By midnight, police had turned the eighteenth floor of the hotel into a crime scene.
Dominic refused to let me go upstairs.
For once, I agreed.
We sat in an empty hospital conference room while Detective Lena Ortiz questioned us separately.
“When did you last see Mr. Kline?” she asked me.
“Three weeks ago. At a board lunch.”
“Did he say anything unusual?”
I thought back.
He had bumped into me outside the elevator after everyone else left.
Congratulations on the baby, he had said.
Then, very quietly: Keep your own copies of everything.
At the time, I thought he meant estate documents.
I told Ortiz.
She wrote it down.
When Dominic came in, she asked him about Cassandra.
“What is your relationship with Ms. Vale?”
“She is a crisis consultant.”
“Only that?”
“Yes.”
I watched his face.
Ortiz watched mine.
“Mrs. Moretti found hotel records suggesting otherwise.”
Dominic looked at me. “Those records were planted.”
“By who?”
“That is what I was trying to find out.”
Ortiz leaned back. “Mr. Moretti, a dead employee was found in a room connected to your key card, and money moved through a company owned by the woman standing beside you at tonight’s gala. You understand how this looks.”
“I understand exactly how it looks.”
His voice was cold.
That bothered me. Dominic became colder when he was hiding emotion.
After Ortiz left, I stood.
“I’m staying with Rebecca.”
“No.”
I stared at him. “You lost the right to tell me where I sleep.”
“Ava—”
“Did you sleep with her?”
Silence.
Rebecca looked away.
Dominic’s throat moved.
“I kissed her once,” he said.
Every sound in the room disappeared.
“When?”
“Five months ago.”
I felt something inside me crack.
“Was I pregnant?”
“Yes.”
I slapped him.
He did not move.
May you like
Then he said the one thing that made it worse.
“She was blackmailing me.”
