Chapter 7: Her Name Was Margaret
The private investigator Diana had hired called me two days later while I was sitting in my car outside a grocery store I hadn't gone into yet.
"Mrs.
Ashford?
This is Ray Coulter.
Diana Reeves asked me to reach out."
"Yes.
What did you find?"
"Quite a bit." A pause, the kind that means the person on the other end is deciding how to begin.
"Margaret Coles is thirty-four years old.
She's been living in a rented house in Scottsdale — just outside Phoenix — for the past two years.
The lease is paid through a holding company registered in Nevada.
I'm still pulling the full corporate trail, but the registered agent for that Nevada company is listed as M.
Ashford."
My husband's initial.
His mother's maiden name was Ashford before she married.
"The child," I said.
"A boy.
Four years old.
His name is Daniel.
He's enrolled in a private preschool in Scottsdale.
Tuition is paid by the same Nevada holding company."
Four years old.
The transfers had started twenty-three months ago.
Which meant Mark had been supporting Margaret Coles before he'd even set up the formal financial structure.
Which meant this had been going on longer than the bank statements showed.
"Does Margaret Coles know he's married?" I asked.
"That I can't tell you for certain," Ray said.
"But I can tell you she's not hiding.
She uses her own name.
The boy uses her surname.
There's no indication she's been told to stay quiet or keep a low profile."
"So she may not know."
"It's possible.
Or she knows and doesn't consider it her problem." Another pause.
"Mrs.
Ashford, there's one more thing.
I pulled property records for the Scottsdale address.
Three weeks ago, an offer was made to purchase the property outright.
The offer came from the Nevada holding company."
Three weeks ago.
Right around the time Mark had started pushing me harder to stay away from the office.
Right around the time he'd had his mother invite her book club friends over every Saturday, filling the house with noise and strangers, making it easier for me to want to leave.
He had been accelerating.
"Ray," I said.
"Can you get me a full report — everything — by tomorrow?"
"I can have it to Diana by end of day today."
"Thank you."
I hung up.
Through the windshield, a woman was loading groceries into the car parked in front of me.
A child was sitting in the cart, kicking his feet against the metal.
She said something to him and he laughed.
I sat there for a moment longer.
Then I called my father.
He answered immediately.
"Laura."
"He has a son," I said.
"The boy is four years old."
My father didn't say anything for a long time.
"Dad."
"I'm here." His voice was rough.
"I'm here, sweetheart."
"He was building a whole life.
A house.
A holding company.
A school for the boy." I stopped.
"He was going to leave me with nothing.
He was going to take the company my father helped build and use it to fund a new family, and then one day he was going to hand me divorce papers and tell me I'd been taken care of."
"He won't," my father said.
"Not now."
"No," I said.
"Not now."
There was a long quiet between us.
The kind that doesn't need to be filled.
"What do you need from me?" he asked.
"Nothing yet.
Diana has everything moving.
The forensic accountant started Thursday." I watched the woman outside buckle her child into the car seat.
"I just needed to tell someone who loves me."
"I love you," he said simply.
"And Laura — you are going to be all right.
I know that."
I believed him.
Not because I felt it yet, but because he had never once been wrong about me.
"I'll call you tomorrow," I said.
I put the phone down, went into the grocery store, and bought everything on the list.
That evening, I made dinner.
Mark ate two helpings and told me it was wonderful.
Ofelia said nothing, which was its own kind of comment.
I smiled and cleared the plates.
The forensic accountant had been inside Crestview's records for thirty-six hours.
Diana had told me to expect a preliminary report by Monday.
It was Saturday night.
May you like
I had two days left to keep my face exactly as it had always been.
I was very good at it by now.
