Chapter 58
Sean found Mrs. Grayson back in the dining room, sitting alone, away from everyone else on the far end of the room. Sean thought she might be crying, but as he moved closer, she was smiling at something on her phone.
“Mrs. Grayson, I need to ask you?—”
“I was just looking at old pictures,” Mrs. Grayson said, and then she turned the phone around so Sean could see the screen.
“This was from a few years ago. I think it might have been the last time we took a trip together as a family. It was the summer after Karla’s first year at kindergarten.
We took a trip down to the Florida Keys.
We rented a boat, and Karla loved it. We all loved it. ”
The picture showed Karla, her hair swept back by the wind, sitting in her mother’s lap, while her mother held up the phone to take a picture of their family as Mr. Grayson captained the boat.
“Looks like you had a good time,” Sean said.
Mrs. Grayson turned the phone back toward her, and then she cleared her throat. “I think that was the last time I was happy. Like, really happy. I think it might have been the last time Roman was happy, too.”
Sean didn’t want to keep skirting around the reason for his visit, so he cut to the chase. “I heard you spoke with Mr. Travis after dinner last night in your hotel room.”
“Mr. Travis has been very persistent,” Mrs. Grayson replied.
“But he’s not the only person you’ve been speaking with,” Sean said. “You’ve also made some calls to the FBI.”
Mrs. Grayson didn’t flinch. She calmly put the phone down, and she sighed.
“My husband thinks I’m stupid. He’s always thought that.
And I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not as acute in the ways of business as he is, but that doesn’t mean I can’t read the room.
I know the money was going away. And, honestly, I was kind of happy about it, you know?
Roman has always been obsessed with making more money and improving our family’s position, but we had everything we could ever want.
His obsession with more was…exhausting.”
“Is that why you told the FBI about what he was doing with the companies he bought?” Sean asked.
Mrs. Grayson ignored Sean’s question. “This was the last chance for my family to be together before a very hard stretch of life comes at us, Sheriff,” Mrs. Grayson said. “But I suppose that didn’t really matter in the end.”
“Is that a yes?” Sean asked.
Mrs. Grayson had a bottle of water in front of her. Condensation had created a damp puddle on the cloth beneath it. She stared at it, keeping her focus on it as she answered. “You’re not married, are you, Sheriff?”
“No,” Sean answered, and he was about to add “not yet,” but kept that part to himself.
“Marriage is complicated,” Mrs. Grayson said. “But what people don’t tell you is that it’s really a power struggle. Each person is constantly trying to remain on top, remain in charge, retain their authority in some shape or manner.”
“I can’t say that I agree,” Sean said.
“Well, speaking from experience, I can,” Mrs. Grayson said.
“Your husband doesn’t know, does he?” Sean asked.
It was the only admission Sean would get when Mrs. Grayson shook her head.
“I don’t consider myself a bad person,” Mrs. Grayson said. “But after this experience, I’ll have to re-evaluate that truth.”
“You should have told me about all of this,” Sean said.
“I imagine this doesn’t make me look very innocent,” Mrs. Grayson answered.
“But I don’t care about that. All I cared about when I called the FBI about my husband’s dirty secrets was how it made me feel.
” She finally broke her staring contest with the bottle and looked at Sean. “And it made me feel good.
“It made me feel good to hurt my husband. To make him stop and consider that the world he had built, the empire he was so proud of, was based on lies and deceit. You should have seen his face, Sheriff, when he discovered the FBI was tracking him. He knew it was over. And when I saw his face, I thought, ‘This is it. This is the moment where he finally stops chasing the endless greed that’s consumed him and focuses on what’s important.
’” She shook her head. “But I was na?ve. Even now, I think I still am. Because instead of cutting his losses, instead of realizing we had more than enough money to live off of for the rest of our lives, he kept pushing for more, kept trying to find a world in which he was the only person on top. And he did it at the cost of our family.”
Mrs. Grayson teared up and then quickly wiped it away. It was the only sign of grief or regret that she had, and it appeared that it did not matter to her one way or the other.
“I never cared for money,” she said. “Maybe that makes me pompous; I don’t know.
I cared about the life we lived together, and it became increasingly more about our status and less about us.
” She laughed. “I was actually ecstatic about going bankrupt. I thought it was going to make our lives like it was when we first met.” She laughed harder. “I was an idiot.”
“You should have told me,” Sean said.
“Perhaps,” Mrs. Grayson answered, wiping her eyes.
“But a part of me hoped that I could still keep my marriage intact. I thought that the deal I’d made with the FBI about keeping Roman out of jail in exchange for the other people he was working with would buy me some goodwill with him.
I thought, maybe, he would understand that this was the only way out.
” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter anymore. ”
“Did you do it?” Sean asked, looking the mother in the eye for the first time. “Did you hide your daughter somewhere in this hotel to trigger the life insurance policy?”
“I just told you that I don’t care about money,” Mrs. Grayson answered.
“But you still haven’t answered my question,” Sean said.
Mrs. Grayson stiffened, straightening up.
“If you don’t find my daughter, then you can go ahead and blame it on me, Sheriff.
Because if she’s gone, my life is over. It’s a mother’s job to protect her children.
The majority of the animal kingdom relies on mothers to protect their young for a reason.
We are a force to be reckoned with. But I’m afraid I’ve never been fierce.
But I promise you this: if I find the person who stole my daughter before you do, then I’m going to do everything within my power to make sure I remedy that deficit. ”
Mrs. Grayson then turned her focus back to the water bottle. Sean wasn’t convinced she was guilty, but she wasn’t innocent either.
Love had prompted Mrs. Grayson to blow up their lives in her twisted effort to save them from a future that would drive them further apart. Perhaps the kidnapper’s motivation was also love, but for someone else?
After all, love made people do crazy things.
A blood-curdling scream shattered the hotel’s silence, and Sean followed it from the lobby all the way to the pool, where he found Margaret Maynard at the edge of the pool.
Floating motionless in the water was Frank Maynard. He was face down. And he was the latest guest to turn up dead.