Chapter Six—Dalen
BY MONDAY MORNING, the security company has reviewed every person who entered Julie’s office building for the last week.
They found nothing. I read the report in the back of the car on the way to work.
The hallway camera caught clients, employees, delivery drivers, cleaning crews, contractors, and enough people carrying coffee to support three cafés.
Everyone who entered Julie’s suite had a reason to be there.
Nobody slipped inside after hours or lingered outside her office.
That doesn’t mean someone didn’t touch the photograph. We still don’t know who did.
I close the report and look out the window. Julie left the house before me this morning. She slept well again last night and seemed more like herself over breakfast, right up until I asked if she had a meeting with Patricia Salish today.
She stared at me for two seconds before answering.
I’m starting to hate asking questions. It feels like a minefield.
My phone rings as the car turns toward Dorsey Capital.
Meg.
I almost let it go to voicemail. We spoke twice over the weekend, both times because she called Julie and couldn’t reach her. The first time, Julie was in the shower. The second, she’d left her phone upstairs.
Neither required my involvement. I answer anyway. “Morning.”
“Hey. Do you have a minute?” Meg sounds hesitant, which gets my attention before she adds, “I need to ask you something about Julie.”
I close my eyes briefly. “Meg.”
“I know. She already yelled at me for talking to you about Mom.” Meg sighs into the phone. “She was right. I wouldn’t be calling if I wasn’t worried.”
The car stops outside my building. I stay where I am instead of opening the door. “What’s wrong?”
“Did she sleep last night?”
I look at the phone before putting it back to my ear. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Because she called me.” Meg pauses. “Late. After eleven.”
Julie was beside me at eleven. I sat in bed reading while she worked on her phone for a few minutes, then she put it on the nightstand and complained that I’d stolen most of the blanket.
“What time?”
“I don’t know exactly.” Meg hesitates again. “Eleven-fifteen, maybe?”
My driver glances at me in the mirror. I gesture for him to wait. “What did she say?”
“That’s why I’m calling.” Meg’s voice lowers. “She sounded confused.”
The word raises every defense I have. I lean forward and rest my arm against the seat in front of me. “What does that mean?”
“She asked if I’d found the picture. I told her I hadn’t, and she said she knew because we’d already talked about it.”
“That isn’t confusing. You were looking for it.”
“I know.” Meg gets quiet for a moment. “Then she asked why I’d called.”
Something cold works through me.
“She called me.”
I rub my thumb against the edge of my phone. “Maybe she was half-asleep.”
“Maybe.” The agreement comes quickly. “She got irritated when I told her she’d called me, then she hung up.”
I think about Julie beside me last night. She didn’t make a phone call.
I’m certain of that.
Almost certain.
I was reading. I went downstairs once for water. I was gone three or four minutes.
“Dalen?”
“I’m here.” I look through the windshield at the entrance to my building. “Did you call her back?”
“Yeah. She didn’t answer.” Meg hesitates. “I don’t want to scare you.”
“That’s a little late.”
“Sorry.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Send me the entry in your call history.”
Meg is quiet for a second. “Yeah. Hold on.”
A message arrives while we’re still connected. I open the screenshot.
Julie. 11:17 PM. Incoming. 3 minutes.
Her contact photo is the one Meg took at our house last Christmas. Julie is wearing a red sweater and laughing at something outside the frame. The call is there. “Did she say anything about the house?”
“No. She mostly sounded tired and annoyed.” Meg exhales. “Please don’t tell her I called you.”
My attention shifts from the screenshot. “I’m not lying to my wife.”
“I’m not asking you to lie. I just don’t want her angry with me again.” Meg’s voice turns pleading. “Then she might stop telling me things.”
I rub my forehead. “You’re asking me to keep this from her.”
“I’m trying to help.” Meg takes another breath. “Just watch her today, okay?”
I hate the request. I hate even more that some part of me has already agreed. “I have to go.” I end the call and get out of the car.
Calla is waiting outside my office when I reach the top floor. She falls into step beside me and hands over a folder. “Your nine o’clock moved to nine-thirty. Legal needs your signature on the Wexler documents, and Julie called.”
I stop walking. “When?”
“About ten minutes ago.”
“What did she want?”
Calla gives me a look over the top of the folder. “She didn’t tell me.”
“Right.”
“Should I add marriage counseling to your calendar?”
I take the folder from her. “Only if you want to update your résumé.”
“I’ll hold off.” She smiles and heads toward her desk.
I go into my office and close the door to call her. Julie answers on the second ring. “Hey.”
Her voice is normal. I sit behind my desk and open the Wexler folder without reading it. “You called?”
“I did. Laurent found a chair so ugly I needed to discuss it, but you missed your opportunity.”
I laugh, but it sounds strained. “Sorry.”
“You should be. I’m damaged now.”
I smile despite myself. “Send me a picture.”
“No. I love you too much.”
There’s noise behind her, then Laurent says something I can’t make out. Julie laughs, and the sound eases something in me.
I pick up a pen and turn it between my fingers. “How’d you sleep?”
Silence is her answer, and I regret the question immediately. There was a reason I didn’t ask her earlier over morning coffee.
“Seriously?” The warmth has disappeared from her voice. “You’ve asked three mornings in a row.”
She’s right. I drop the pen on the desk. “I’ll stop.”
“Please do. You’re making me feel like I should start submitting sleep reports.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“I know.” Her tone softens enough that I slowly relax.
I should tell her Meg called. The screenshot is still on my phone. I don’t bring it up.
Julie says my name. “You there?”
“Yeah.” I force my attention back to her. “Send me the chair.”
“I already said no.”
“Then I don’t believe it exists.”
She gasps loudly enough that I pull the phone away from my ear. “Take that back.”
I laugh as she starts describing the chair in increasingly offensive detail. Laurent apparently takes the phone away from her a minute later and informs me my wife has no respect for Italian design.
By the time I hang up, I’m smiling. Then I open Meg’s screenshot again, and the smile disappears.
I call my cell provider first. They can’t tell me anything useful about a call made from Julie’s phone without Julie authorizing access to her account. Her phone is on our family plan, but the representative still needs verification I don’t have.
I’m actually relieved by the barrier, which should probably tell me something about the call I’m considering making next. I stare at my contacts for another minute before calling my physician. His receptionist offers me a cancellation at eleven-thirty, and I take it.
DR. PETROV HAS BEEN my physician for nine years and has never once appeared impressed by my schedule, money, or attempts to turn medical appointments into conference calls.
Today, he closes his laptop after I explain why I’m here. “You understand I can’t tell you what’s happening with your wife. I haven’t examined her, and I’m not going to speculate about a diagnosis based on what you’re telling me.”
“I know.” I shift in the chair. “I’m not asking you to diagnose her.”
Dr. Petrov rests his hands on the closed laptop. “What are you asking?”
I don’t have a good answer. The exam room suddenly seems too small for the conversation.
I get up from the chair and move toward the window, then stop because pacing isn’t going to make this easier.
“My wife woke up convinced someone was standing beside our bed. The next morning, a door she remembers locking was open. A necklace disappeared and turned up in a coat pocket she doesn’t remember using. ”
He listens while I tell him about the threatening text and the photograph. Saying it all out loud makes the situation sound worse instead of better.
“Her mother had a psychiatric crisis when Julie was a kid. She apparently heard people in the house who weren’t there.”
Dr. Petrov’s eyebrows rise slightly. “That came from your wife?”
“Partly. Her sister told me first, and Julie confirmed it.”
He opens the laptop again but doesn’t type anything. “What does your wife think is happening?”
“Someone is doing this to her.”
“And what do you think?”
I look away. That’s why I’m here. “I think someone could be doing this to her.”
Dr. Petrov watches me for a moment. “That’s different from what I asked.”
I dislike him a little for noticing. I return to the chair and sit. “I don’t know. She also made a phone call last night she doesn’t seem to remember.”
“According to whom?”
“Her sister.”
He leans back. “Your wife hasn’t said she doesn’t remember it?”
“No.”
“Have you asked?”
I shake my head. “If I ask her about every ordinary thing she does, I’m going to make her feel like I’m monitoring her.”
A faint hint of his mostly gone Russian accent creeps through along with faint disapproval. “You are monitoring her.”
I flinch and sit back while Dr. Petrov’s expression stays neutral.
“You asked her how she slept this morning,” he says.
“How do you know that?”
“You led with her sleep history and told me you’ve been tracking it.”
I almost argue, then stop. It’s true.
Dr. Petrov folds his hands. “Sleep deprivation can affect memory, concentration, mood, and perception. So can stress. So can a long list of medical conditions. None of that tells you what’s happening with Julie.”
“What should I look for?”