CHAPTER FOUR-3
548 Words
“I’m glad that part’s over,” Maddie murmured as she rubbed her temples. “Although I should probably apologize to Caroline at some point.”
“I don’t think so, personally,” Chase said. “She was out of line. But you do what you feel is right, Maddie.”
“Here, sweetie,” Kathy said when she came back into the house. “Thought I’d grab the mail for you.”
“Thanks,” Maddie told her, and began to leaf through the stack.
When she saw the thick manila envelope, her brows furrowed.
“Wonder what this is?” she wondered out loud. “And, who sent it. No return address on it.”
“Only one way to find out,” Deborah said.
“I suppose,” Maddie replied, and opened the envelope to pull out the contents. She set the envelope on the coffee table and began to scan through the half-inch thick stack of pages.
Deborah turned to say something to Maddie and noticed her daughter had turned ghostly white.
“Maddie... What’s wrong?”
“What... what...” was all Maddie could manage to say as she moved faster and faster, looking at page after page. “Oh...oh, no....”
She looked up at her parents and at Kathy.
“Look... look at all this...,” her voice trailed off, and she thrust the pages toward them.
Chase reached out and took some from her.
“These... are these bank records?”
Her mother said, “Oh, my word... Kathy, look at these. What is this?”
Kathy scanned the twelve pages Maddie’s mother had handed her.
“Wow,” Kathy muttered, turning red. “Um... Deborah, those are screenshots of... um...some pretty explicit conversations in an ...um... alternative lifestyle chat room.”
“And these pages,” Maddie managed, “are filled with very disturbing and bigoted remarks...”
At the very last page of the stack, Maddie paused, then flinched as if she’d been struck.
“What, honey?” her father asked.
She held out the last page to him.
“Dear Madeleine,” Chase began to read aloud, “I know you didn’t know that your husband was into any of this, and I felt you deserved to know who and what he really was. Here’s all his logins and passwords, if you would rather check it out for yourself. I know seeing all this hurts you, and I’m sorry for that. But you needed to know just how big a lie Eric Nibless was living.”
“We need to get the police over here,” Kathy piped up. “They need to see all this, take it into evidence, maybe. I’d say chances are pretty damn good it’s related to his death.”
“I’ll go get the detective’s card,” Deborah said, and moved toward the kitchen counter where she’d seen it last.
Maddie nodded dully as her brain tried desperately to process everything she’d just seen. Some of the most horrible, hateful things I’ve ever read.... and chatting with strange men to arrange hookups?
From the corner of her eye, she saw her father’s face turning crimson with rage.
“These pages here are only partly bank records. Some of these pages are screenshots of my company’s accounting system. And they show money flowing out of my company and into an overseas account that I have no knowledge of,” he thundered. “It sure as hell looks like Eric was stealing from me.”
Maddie rose from the couch. “I don’t feel well, I’m going to go lie down,” she murmured.
She managed to take seven steps before the room began to spin and close in on her, then she lost consciousness and crumpled in a heap to the floor.
- Writer
