Chapter 4 - My Best Friend Had More Than One Secret
I called Lauren at 2:11 p.m.
She rejected the call.
I called again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Nothing.
Rebecca told me not to chase her.
“Let her come to you.”
“She may have evidence.”
“She may also be involved.”
That possibility hurt differently.
The affair was personal.
Fraud was calculated.
One could be explained by selfishness.
The other required planning.
At three thirty, I received a text.
Lauren.
Please don’t call. I’m scared.
I stared at it.
Scared of whom?
Me?
Ryan?
The police?
I typed one sentence.
Then tell me the truth.
Three dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
Finally:
I can’t over text.
I called Rebecca.
Twenty minutes later, Lauren agreed to meet us at a coffee shop in Lake Oswego.
Public place.
Cameras.
People everywhere.
Rebecca sat beside me.
Lauren arrived twelve minutes late wearing sunglasses despite the rain.
She looked nothing like the woman who had walked into my kitchen carrying croissants.
She looked terrified.
She sat across from us.
“I didn’t know about the account in your name.”
Rebecca spoke before I could.
“What did you know about?”
Lauren looked at me.
“I knew Ryan was moving money.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did you sign?”
Her fingers twisted around a paper napkin.
“Documents for North River.”
“You own half.”
“I don’t really own half.”
Rebecca leaned forward.
“Legally, your name appears to.”
Lauren whispered, “Ryan asked me to sign.”
“Why?”
“He said we were going to start a restaurant.”
I stared at her.
“You and my husband were going to start a restaurant?”
Her cheeks flushed.
“It wasn’t like—”
“Don’t.”
She stopped.
Rebecca asked, “When did your relationship with Ryan become sexual?”
Lauren closed her eyes.
“Four months ago.”
Four months.
Sixteen weeks.
A hundred small memories rearranged themselves inside my head.
Her birthday dinner when Ryan disappeared for twenty minutes.
The barbecue when Lauren left early and Ryan suddenly needed gas.
The weekend she convinced me to visit my sister in Seattle.
“Four months?”
She nodded.
I felt strangely calm.
“When did it become emotional?”
She looked away.
That was answer enough.
“How long?”
“Almost a year.”
Rebecca asked, “What does any of this have to do with financial documents?”
Lauren opened her purse.
“I kept copies.”
I stopped breathing.
She removed a flash drive.
Rebecca didn’t touch it.
“What’s on that?”
“Contracts. Spreadsheets. Emails.”
“Why?”
“Ryan told me to delete them.”
Rebecca and I exchanged a glance.
“When?”
“This morning.”
I remembered Thomas’s vendor call.
Ryan had been trying to erase everything.
Lauren continued.
“He called after he left your house. He was screaming. He said Emma had found the account.”
“What account?”
“He wouldn’t explain.”
“Did he tell you to destroy anything else?”
She nodded.
“A blue binder.”
My pulse jumped.
The empty space behind the filing cabinet.
“Do you have it?”
“No.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ryan told me you had a copy.”
Lauren looked genuinely confused.
“A copy of what?”
I took out the note and placed it on the table.
LAUREN HAS COPY.
She stared at it.
Her face changed.
“No.”
“What?”
She stood abruptly.
Rebecca said, “Lauren, sit down.”
“He knows.”
“Knows what?”
She sank back into the chair.
“There’s a storage unit.”
I waited.
“Ryan rented it last year.”
“Where?”
“Beaverton.”
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“What do you know?”
She rubbed her palms together.
“Cash.”
Rebecca’s expression sharpened.
“How much?”
“I saw maybe twenty thousand once.”
“Anything else?”
“Files.”
“What files?”
“Company files. Copies of signatures. Vendor contracts.”
I felt sick.
Lauren whispered, “He told me it was emergency documentation.”
“You believed him?”
“At first.”
“And later?”
“I stopped asking.”
I laughed bitterly.
“How convenient.”
She flinched.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I know I betrayed you.”
“You slept with my husband while telling me I was paranoid.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I was horrible.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t change that.”
“No.”
“But I can help you now.”
That sentence angered me more than I expected.
“You don’t get to become the hero of a fire you helped start.”
She looked down.
Rebecca let the silence sit.
Then she asked about the storage unit.
Lauren knew the address.
She also had a gate code.
But the lease was not in Ryan’s name.
It was in mine.
Of course it was.
By five o’clock, Rebecca had contacted law enforcement.
Because if fraudulent documents and company funds were involved, we were no longer talking about a bad marriage.
We were talking about possible crimes.
At six thirty, I returned home.
Patricia was still there.
She had spent the afternoon with Thomas and the company attorney.
She looked twenty years older.
“They suspended him,” she said.
“The board?”
She nodded.
“Pending investigation.”
I sat beside her.
For the first time since sunrise, neither of us had anything to do.
No phone calls.
No confrontation.
No documents.
Just grief.
Patricia looked toward the window.
“When Ryan was nine, he stole forty dollars from my purse.”
I glanced at her.
“He cried when I found out. Your father-in-law made him work every Saturday for two months to pay it back.”
She smiled sadly.
“He hated us for it.”
“He was nine.”
“I thought he learned.”
She looked at me.
“Maybe some people only learn to hide better.”
At 7:02, someone knocked.
We both froze.
Not Ryan.
Two police officers stood outside.
Behind them was Detective Mara Collins.
She introduced herself and asked if we could speak privately.
My stomach tightened.
“Did you find Ryan?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
She looked at Patricia.
Then at me.
“We went to the storage facility.”
I gripped the edge of the door.
“And?”
“The unit was empty.”
My heart sank.
“But,” Collins continued, “facility cameras show Mr. Mercer arriving shortly after noon.”
Ryan had beaten us there.
“He removed several boxes.”
“Where did he take them?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Patricia swore softly.
Collins’s expression remained serious.
“There’s another problem.”
“What?”
“The storage unit was rented using your identification.”
“I never rented it.”
“I understand.”
She opened a folder.
“But there were fingerprints inside.”
My mouth went dry.
“Mine?”
“No.”
She looked directly at me.
“Lauren Whitfield’s.”
I said nothing.
Collins continued.
“Numerous prints.”
That could have meant anything.
Lauren had admitted being there.
Then Collins added the part that changed everything.
“We also found a torn envelope behind a shelf.”
She handed me a photograph.
The envelope was addressed to Ryan.
Return address: Cascade Women’s Clinic.
I stared at it.
Patricia stared too.
I looked up.
“Why would my husband receive mail from a women’s clinic?”
Collins didn’t answer.
She didn’t have to.
My phone rang.
Lauren.
I answered immediately.
Her voice was shaking.
“Emma.”
“What?”
“I need to tell you something.”
I already knew I wasn’t going to like it.
May you like
Lauren started crying.
“I’m pregnant.”
