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Then his financial records… Basic stuff. Checking account, savings account, money market account. All totaled about thirty-five thousand dollars. Not a lot, but more than many people had. Daphne had gotten a scholarship to Stilton. Good thing, as her parents couldn’t have afforded it.
Jonathan’s health insurance had covered most of Daphne’s hospitalization during her junior year of high school. Still, Jonathan and Lucy had paid twenty percent of the bill, which amounted to about a hundred thousand dollars. Where had they gotten that kind of money? The billing records for the hospital were all marked paid. Lucy had quit working that year as well.
Yeah, that was a big question mark.
Of course, did it have anything to do with Murphy’s death? Patty’s disappearance? Definitely not. Still…my curiosity won out, and I decided to investigate Jonathan further. After all, I was married to his daughter.
My father was nothing if not thorough. Underneath what I’d found were Jonathan’s bank records for the last twenty years. Good. Easy enough to see where an extra hundred grand had come from.
But…nothing.
Just his paychecks and Lucy’s, until she stopped working, were accounted for. Next I checked his credit card accounts. No charges at all to the facility. How had that hundred grand gotten paid?
Either Jonathan had paid cash, or someone else had paid the bill.
I ruled out cash. Why would he pay cash when he could so easily write a check? More likely, he would have made smaller payments over time. But he didn’t do any of that.
Deduction—someone else had paid the bill.
But who?
A relative, perhaps? Did he or Lucy have any relatives with that kind of money?
My mouth dropped open.
He did.
His son. Larry Wade.
Larry was a millionaire due to his investments with the Future Lawmakers. Tom, Theo, and Wendy hadn’t told anyone, including their parents, about the fruits of their labor. But Larry? He and I had never been close, and we didn’t talk a lot.
Could Larry have paid for Daphne’s treatment? If so, I owed him one.
Mental Note: Get in touch with Larry.
Of course, the last time I’d tried that, I’d run into Theo at Larry’s place.
I’d gotten off track quickly. My goal was to figure out who had threatened my son. He was protected for now, housebound with the best security available. After that, my goal was finding who had killed Murphy and who had taken Patty. The latter was far more important—Murph was already dead, so I couldn’t save him. I hoped I could figure everything out in time to save Patty, but I had the sinking feeling all the events were related.
Someone was fucking with me—fucking with me through those I loved—and I wouldn’t stop until I found out who and put a bullet between his brows.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Daphne
After breakfast, once baby Joe had a full belly, I left him in the care of Mazie and my mother and walked to the greenhouse.
I did my best thinking among the plants, and right now, I needed to think. Why had those “friends” from the hospital come back to me? I had no idea, but I wanted to know why. Did they have something to tell me? To teach me? Or was I chasing unicorns?
Mazie’s tulips were always in bloom—both inside and outside, now that spring was here. For some reason, I preferred to enjoy them here, inside the greenhouse. I shook my head. That didn’t make a lot of sense. Flowers were meant to be outside, swaying under the sun and absorbing its rays.
So why did I enjoy them more in this enclosed space than I did outside in Mazie’s beautiful garden?
And that was when it hit me—why I’d remembered those patients at the hospital. We were like the flowers in the greenhouse—enclosed, not in the perfect place, but still existing. We were still people.
I’d never bothered to learn their names.
In fact, I hadn’t even remembered their existence until now.
They were telling me something, though, I was sure. What were they telling me about Patty? Maybe even about Sage? Had I been a good friend? Maybe I didn’t try hard enough to keep in touch with Sage after she moved.
No. Not true. I’d written five times, and she never replied once.
As for Patty…well, I’d been enamored with Brad since the first night of school. Then, a month later, I was pregnant. Weeks after that, I was married and had left school. But I’d been a good friend to her those couple of months. Hadn’t I?
Maybe I hadn’t.
Maybe I’d been too consumed with myself and my own problems.
Maybe that had been my problem at the hospital too.
Patty hadn’t been found. Brad had been up all night in his office, going over his father’s files. Why he thought that might help Patty, I had no idea, but I didn’t ask questions. I wanted my friend back.
And deep inside me—that place I never allowed myself to go—I was frightened. Frightened that something terrible had happened to her, just as it had to Sean.
