Chapter 5: What Vanessa Kept
Vanessa was still in the ballroom when I returned.
Most of the employees had moved to the reception area at Malcolm's direction — drinks, food, the careful normalcy that organizations use to absorb shock.
A handful of board members remained near the stage, speaking quietly.
Garrett was packing his folders.
Vanessa stood near the far wall with a glass of water she hadn't touched.
She watched me cross the room toward her.
She didn't move.
"I wondered if you'd come to me directly," she said.
"I almost didn't." I stopped a few feet away.
"I thought the attorneys could handle it."
"But?"
"But I wanted to ask you something first."
She waited.
"Did you know about the shell account?" I asked.
"The one registered in your name?"
Her expression didn't shift.
"He told me it was a consulting arrangement.
That I'd receive a percentage of the vendor savings he negotiated."
"And you believed that."
"I believed a lot of things about Derek." She looked down at her water glass.
"Some of them were even true."
"The earrings," I said.
Her hand moved slightly.
Stopped.
"He gave them to me for my birthday," she said.
"In February.
He said he'd had them made."
"They were my mother's," I said.
"She left them to me when she died.
I've had them since I was thirty-two."
Vanessa set the water glass down on the nearest table.
Her hand was steady.
That surprised me.
"I didn't know that," she said.
"I know you didn't." I had spent six weeks deciding whether that distinction mattered.
I had concluded that it did, but only slightly.
"That's why I'm speaking to you before the attorneys do.
Not because it changes the legal situation.
It doesn't.
But because I wanted you to know."
She looked at me directly for the first time all evening.
Without the performance.
Without the careful positioning.
"What happens to me?" she said.
"That depends on what you tell Garrett's team tomorrow morning." I kept my voice level.
"If the shell account was structured without your full knowledge, and you cooperate fully, that's a different situation than if you were a knowing participant." I paused.
"Were you?"
A long silence.
"He told me the arrangement was standard," she said.
"That it was how senior executives structured supplemental compensation to avoid payroll complications." She stopped.
"I had questions.
I didn't ask them."
"Why not?"
She looked at me, and for just a moment, something honest moved across her face.
"Because I didn't want the answers to change things."
I understood that.
I didn't say so.
"Give Garrett the full account of what Derek told you," I said.
"Every conversation.
Every date you remember.
Every document he showed you." I picked up my own glass from the table.
"And take the earrings off before you leave tonight.
Leave them with Malcolm's assistant."
Vanessa reached up slowly.
She unclipped the first earring.
Then the second.
She held them in her palm for a moment — two small points of light in a cupped hand — and then placed them carefully on the white tablecloth.
She didn't say anything.
Neither did I.
May you like
I picked them up and closed my fingers around them.
They were warm.
