Chapter 4: The Contractor Who Disappeared
Martin Vale had vanished.
His apartment in Queens was empty.
His phone had been disconnected.
His bank account had been cleared two days after Emily’s fall.
Detective Ortiz believed he had fled.
Emily disagreed.
“People running away take clothes,” she said. “Passports. Medication. Something.”
Daniel nodded.
“His apartment still had all of that.”
Ethan stood silently beside the door.
He had spent the last twenty-four hours calling family attorneys, board members, and company executives.
No one gave him a straight answer.
The Montgomery name had once opened every door.
Now it caused people to stop answering.
Emily looked toward him.
“Did you know Martin?”
“No.”
“Did your mother?”
“She knew everyone who worked on the townhouse.”
Daniel placed a photograph on the table.
Martin Vale stood outside a warehouse beside a black town car.
The driver was recognizable.
Gerald Pike.
Victoria’s personal chauffeur for nearly twenty years.
Ethan leaned closer.
“Gerald retired last year.”
“No,” Daniel said. “He disappeared last year.”
Emily remembered Gerald.
Quiet.
Formal.
Always wearing gray gloves, even in warm weather.
He had driven Victoria everywhere.
Then, one week after Emily began asking questions about foundation invoices, Victoria announced that Gerald had moved to Florida.
There had been no farewell.
No retirement party.
No forwarding address.
Daniel opened another image.
Gerald’s town car had been recorded entering a private storage facility in New Jersey three nights before Emily’s fall.
Martin Vale sat in the passenger seat.
“What was in the storage unit?” Emily asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
Detective Ortiz entered with a sealed envelope.
“We found something in Victoria’s handbag.”
Inside was a second cell phone.
It contained no contacts, no photographs, and only a handful of encrypted messages.
One message had been sent to an unknown number the night before Emily’s fall.
SHE WILL NOT SIGN. PROCEED WITH THE ALTERNATIVE.
Another appeared thirty minutes after the ambulance left the townhouse.
FAILURE. PREPARE HOSPITAL OPTION.
Ethan stumbled backward.
Emily did not.
She had already accepted what he was still trying to deny.
Victoria had prepared more than one way to kill her.
The first plan had been the balcony.
May you like
The second had been the pillow.
And if both failed, there was almost certainly a third.
