Chapter 3: What Raymond Told Them
Victoria did not move for a long moment.
The lilies were still in her hand.
One white petal came loose and drifted to the floor.
"Raymond wouldn't," she said.
Her voice was steady, but her eyes had gone somewhere else — calculating, searching.
"He loves me.
He would never—"
"He was in that chair at six forty-five this morning," Gerald said.
He did not raise his voice.
He simply pointed to the chair beside the window.
"He sat there for two hours.
He told us everything."
"That's a lie."
"He brought documentation." Gerald opened his briefcase and laid three printed pages on the bedside table.
"Pharmacy receipts.
Text messages between the two of you.
A photograph of the two of you taken at a hotel in Geneva last March — while Mr.
Mercer was here in this hospital being evaluated for what his cardiologist believed was an inherited cardiac condition."
Victoria set the lilies down on the windowsill.
She turned to face Jonathan directly.
"You put him up to this," she said.
"You got to him somehow."
"Raymond came on his own," Jonathan said.
"I didn't even know his last name until Gerald told me this morning."
"Then he's lying to protect himself.
He's trying to make a deal.
Whatever he told you, he's the one who—"
"Victoria." Gerald's voice cut through hers cleanly.
"He recorded your conversations.
Both of you, on his phone, over a period of fourteen months.
He has forty-one recordings."
The room went quiet except for the heart monitor.
Victoria looked at the recording device in the second man's hand.
She looked at Gerald.
She looked at Jonathan.
Then something shifted in her face — not guilt, not remorse.
Something colder.
A recalculation.
"I want a lawyer," she said.
"That is your right," Gerald replied.
She picked up her handbag from the chair.
Her movements were precise, unhurried.
She smoothed the front of her blazer.
"Whatever Raymond told you," she said quietly, "he was the one who sourced it.
He was the one who suggested it.
I was a grieving wife doing everything I could to manage a husband who was already dying." She looked at Jonathan one last time.
"Any good defense attorney will make that argument in under ten minutes."
She walked to the door.
Her hand was on the handle when Jonathan spoke.
"The new will has already been filed, Victoria.
Gerald submitted it to probate court at seven this morning.
You are not named in it.
Not one line."
Her hand tightened on the handle.
"And the Naperville estate," Jonathan added, "is already in a trust.
You cannot touch it."
She opened the door.
A uniformed Chicago PD officer was standing in the corridor.
Beside him stood a woman in a dark blazer holding a badge.
"Victoria Mercer?" the woman said.
Victoria turned back to look at Jonathan one final time.
Her expression was unreadable.
"You should have d\*ed when you were supposed to," she said.
Then the officer stepped forward, and the door swung shut behind them.
Jonathan lay back against the pillow.
Gerald closed his briefcase.
The second man — a private investigator named Harlan Cross, Jonathan would later learn — switched off the recording device and tucked it into his coat pocket.
"It's done," Gerald said.
Jonathan looked at the white lilies sitting on the windowsill.
May you like
"Not yet," he said.
"There's still Raymond."
