Page 66 of The Marriage Bid
Another voice boomed through the speaker. “It’s Kelly.” His low baritone voice was a clear contrast to Matt’s high-pitched one.
“Come on in,” I said.
A moment later, the door to the office opened, and Kelly walked past. He was wearing his usual suit: black, white shirt, thin black tie, and a black briefcase in his hand. His clean-shaven bald head seemed more of a lifestyle choice than a consequence of alopecia if the faint hairline marks were a tell. He must have been in his forties now, but he had always worked for my father and then my brother. He was a staple at Hawthorne Corp and started working there in his twenties. He was now the head of security at the family business, a darn good private investigator, and one of the very few people my brother trusted. But what I liked about him was that he would divulge nothing about this investigation to Nolan.
“I was on my way out,” I said, “and I had forgotten we had a meeting.”
“We didn’t. We were supposed to meet on Monday.” Kelly drew out one of the visitor’s chairs and sank into it, then placed a tablet and a notepad on the desk. “But since my work is done, I thought you needed the report as soon as possible.”
“You’re done?” I sat back down in my chair.
“As done as I could be with what I found out.”
“Okay.”
“We followed your lead. The file you gave me was of great help. The ex-wife knows nothing and is currently married to a Russian billionaire. She does not need your money. The lawyer, Bill, while suspicious, was clean. And he knew nothing. Which leaves a name you didn’t give me, surprisingly.”
Kelly opened his tablet, tapped a few items, and then pushed it over to my side. “Your blackmailer is Pamela Channing. Your aunt-in-law, I presume.” On the tablet was a candid, zoomed-in photo of a woman in her late fifties, early sixties, crossing the streets of New York.
I raised my eyebrows. I hadn’t told Kelly that Saffron and I were married, only that it was her father who last blackmailed me, but a thorough investigator like him would have dug that out easily.
“What makes you so sure?”
“That’s her bank.” Kelly zoomed in on the image and pointed to a building behind her. “She was coming from there after withdrawing from her account. Which had the ten thousand I told you to pay to that company, of course. And the account she was withdrawing from was Winds and Willow Investment Company. Which is wholly owned by her, of course. It is a shell company that owns another shell company…” He swiped the screen, and a document appeared. A certificate of incorporation with the names Pamela Channing and Saffron Channing on it. My heart skipped a beat. “That is owned by this company, which also owns the shell company that has the banking details you were sending money to.” He swiped again, and this time another document appeared of a different company with the familiar name, Rudderless Financial Investments. But my mind was still on the document with Saffron’s name on it.
“Saffron’s part of this?”
Kelly shook his head. “She’s never taken money out of these companies. As far as I am aware, she doesn’t know about all of this.”
“So you’re saying…”
“Pamela Channing must have gotten the blackmail material from her brother, set up shell companies, or the brother did on her behalf while he was alive, though I think this is all her doing, and has been the one you’ve been giving money to. She must have stolen or gotten Saffron’s ID through other means because there’s nothing that went into her bank account or shows she was receiving money from Pamela. For an aunt, Pamela is quite stingy, actually.”
That was quite the surprise. After the weekend at the hunting lodge, Saffron had been much more open with me about her relationship with her aunt. She was like a mother to her and visited her all the time. Fucking hell. How was I going to tell her?
“Is that all?”
No, he leaned down to reach for something in his briefcase and took out a sheet of papers. “The photos.” He laid them down on the table. I brushed through them. The photos of my father with the commissioner. “The emails are on the flash drive.” He took out a drive from his pocket and tossed it to me. “But I am sure you’re aware of those. And this,” he leaned down again to reach for something in his briefcase, “is the confession from the commissioner. From what I can gather, the commissioner ended up becoming a friend of Channing. Towards the end of his life, the commissioner found God, if you could believe it, and drafted a confession letter about all the bribes he took. But when the commissioner died by suicide, Channing took the confession letter, made a few changes, and turned it into a suicide note.”
I looked over the letter and immediately understood why the journalist who ran with the piece had believed it. It lookedlike a suicide note. It appeared almost real. “How do you know it’s not the note he wrote?”
“The family says there was no note when he died, and the police confirmed this.”
“Where did you find all of this? Does she know you have the documents?”
“If she bothers to check the safe in her home, she will find them missing, but she won’t know who took them.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been of great help.”
“I’ve sent you the bill. And emailed you the report.” Kelly got up and put his things in his briefcase.
I got to my feet. “Do you have Pamela’s address?”
“It’s in the file. She has a fairly predictable routine. She’s probably at her place now if you want to confront her.”
Not yet. I had to talk to Saffron first.
Chapter 30
