Chapter Nine—Chris
THE GUESTHOUSE HAS one room, a bathroom with a showerhead that produces approximately the same water pressure as someone breathing on me through a straw, and a kitchenette with a two-burner stove, a mini-fridge, and four mismatched mugs in the cabinet.
I sleep for nine hours the first night.
That surprises me more than it should. The mattress is nothing special, and the room is colder than the penthouse because I didn’t figure out the heater until almost midnight.
There’s no harbor light leaking around the curtains, no traffic twenty floors below, and no elevator humming behind a wall.
Sometime after I turn off the lamp, I hear water moving through the trees and eventually identify the creek at the bottom of the property.
When I wake, gray light fills the single window. It’s six-thirty.
Through the trees, I can see the kitchen side of the lodge. No lights are on yet. Lorna is probably asleep. I hope she is.
In Charleston, during the worst months, I’d sometimes come out of the bedroom at three in the morning and find her on the couch with the television off. She’d say she couldn’t sleep. I’d tell her she should try.
I understood even less than I thought.
I find coffee in the kitchenette cabinet and make it in a dented stovetop pot. The grounds are stale, but caffeine doesn’t have to be good to work. I carry a mug outside and sit on the narrow porch with my phone on the railing.
The PI I hired yesterday sent an update at five-twelve this morning.
He’s working through the building credential records, alarm history, employee files, vendor permissions, and everyone associated with household access.
I’ve told him not to rely solely on the police interviews.
I want locations verified independently where possible and a separate review of every camera covering the building, garage, street, and surrounding businesses.
There are no conclusions yet.
Fenton has been helping with the business side of the requests. Employment records, vendor contracts, old security invoices, or whatever the investigator needs from Aldren Capital or my files. A week ago, that sentence wouldn’t have required thought.
Fenton coordinates things. That’s his job, and he’s exceptional at it. Yesterday, Willa showed me an uninterrupted record of him working from home while somebody else was inside the penthouse. The police cleared him. Willa agreed with them.
I do too. What bothers me this morning is how much of my life requires him to answer a question before I do.
My phone buzzes against the wooden railing with a calendar notification: Eight-thirty call with Jensen.
I cancel it and send Jensen a message asking him to call me directly if he needs me. Then I drink bad coffee and listen to the creek.
I bought groceries after leaving Lorna yesterday.
She’d offered dinner on the porch, then made it clear there was a store in town.
I understood the preference and gave her what she’d asked for without making her say it twice.
Chicken, bread, eggs, and enough other things to keep me out of the lodge for several days.
I just forgot coffee, hence the stale stuff I found in the cabinet.
At seven-forty-five, my phone rings.
Fenton sounds alert and ready to get to work. “Good morning.”
“Morning.”
“Jensen has the Haverford revisions ready. The counterparty insists on wet signatures for the amendment, so the originals need to be overnighted to you.”
I rest the mug on the porch railing. “Can’t they hold until I’m back?”
He rustles pages. “They can, but it pushes outside counsel by at least two days. Jensen thought you’d want to keep the current closing schedule.”
He’s right. I can’t just stop working because my personal life is falling apart. “Send them.”
“Where?”
I look through the trees toward the lodge. Fenton doesn’t know where I am. Yesterday, I told him I’d be unavailable in Charleston for several days and would handle calls myself. He asked no questions beyond whether he should move two meetings. There’s no reason he needs the address now.
“There’s a post office in the nearest town.” I give him the name from the sign I passed yesterday. “Send it there in my name. I’ll pick it up.”
He types before answering. “I’ll have the package out before noon. Tracking should populate this afternoon.”
“Thanks.” I don’t try to muster any enthusiasm for paperwork.
“Jensen also has two lender calls this morning. I can move both to Thursday or send him in your place.”
“I’ll take the first one. Move the second.”
“Done.”
I catch myself almost ending the call there. “Anything else waiting for me?”
Fenton takes a second before answering. “Three approvals that can wait, one call from Richard Moray, and the Singapore team wants a decision on revised underwriting before their Wednesday morning.”
I grunt. “Send the underwriting directly to me.”
He sounds too cheerful. “I already put it in your queue.”
“Not the summary. The full package.”
He pauses. “Of course.” It’s not resistance.
Fenton has spent years giving me condensed versions because that’s what I paid him to do. I’m changing instructions in the middle of the process and expecting him to adjust immediately. I’m not surprised he does. “Anything else?”
He clicks the keyboard again, obviously making a note. “No. I’ll reach out if something changes.”
I remember to add, “I’ll manage my own calls for now.”
His reply is immediate and unbothered. “Understood.”
We end the call.
I sit with the phone in my hand for another minute before opening the underwriting package.
It’s thirty-eight pages. I used to consider documents like this a waste of my time unless somebody had already pulled out the decisions I needed to make. This morning, I read the first six pages before realizing I’m doing it partly because I want to know what Fenton would normally have removed.
Nothing important yet.
That reassures me, but I don’t forget he truncated everything important out of Willa’s report. I’ll need to discuss it with him soon, but not right now. Once the danger passes and the merger is finished, I’ll sit down with him for a full reprimand and restructure of his duties.
By eight-thirty, I’ve moved inside because my fingers are cold.
I take the lender call at the small table beside the kitchenette.
The connection drops once. A truck passes outside somewhere far enough away that I hear it only briefly.
Nobody from the office asks where I am, and the call ends at nine-twelve.
I make eggs, answer two emails myself, and spend twenty minutes on the phone with the investigator, Mark Stone.
He’s already cleared the housekeeper independently and confirmed the building maintenance timelines.
The service credential is still the useful piece. It narrows the method, not the person.
“We’re also looking at whether any temporary credential could’ve been copied or reassigned,” he says.
“Could someone use a valid credential without their name appearing?”
“Yes. That’s part of the problem. The log records authorization, not identity.”
“Keep going.”
“I will.”
I end the call and look toward the lodge. A light is on in the kitchen now. I wait another fifteen minutes before walking over.
Lorna is on the porch with a mug and her laptop. She’s wearing leggings, thick socks, and a cream sweater I haven’t seen before. Her hair is twisted up loosely, several pieces already escaping around her face.
She looks rested. Not completely, but enough that the difference from Charleston is obvious.
I stop at the bottom of the porch steps. “Morning.”
She looks over the top of her laptop. “Morning.”
“Can I come up?”
Her gaze moves toward the empty chair at the far end of the porch. “You can sit there.”
I take the invitation exactly as offered. The chair is cold through my trousers. The mountains beyond the trees are clearer this morning, with orange starting along the higher ridges and low cloud still caught in one valley.
Lorna types for another minute before closing the laptop halfway. “You survive the shower?”
“Technically.”
Her mouth twitches. “That bad?”
I shrug. “I think the plumbing resents guests.”
“It’s old.”
“I remember.” The response comes out before I think about it.
Lorna’s expression changes, and I regret dragging our first visit into the conversation. She picks up her coffee instead of replying.
I let the subject go. “The investigator called.”
That gets her attention. She doesn’t ask what investigator, so I assume Willa debriefed her on my intention to hire Mark Stone. “Anything?”
“He independently confirmed the housekeeper and maintenance people. He’s expanding beyond the named access list because the credential doesn’t identify the person carrying it.”
Lorna rests her mug near the laptop. “Meaning somebody could’ve borrowed one.”
“Or copied one. Or got access another way. He’s checking temporary vendor credentials too.”
“That’s good.”
“The police have the footage and the full records now.”
She nods once, but her lips turn down as though she’s remembering that night. “Willa told me.”
I nod.
The conversation could end there, but she doesn’t reopen her laptop.
“The building manager revoked every credential attached to the unit,” I say. “New access has to come through you or me.”
She raises a brow. “What about the alarm?”
“Only our codes remain. Nobody else has administrative access.”
“Including Fenton?”
“Including Fenton.”
Lorna rubs her thumb along the handle of the mug. “Did he ask?”
“He doesn’t know yet.”
Both eyebrows rise.
“The alarm company made the changes. I didn’t call him about it.”
She sips her coffee. “That’s new.” There’s no praise in the observation but no biting sarcasm either.
“Yes.”
Lorna looks out toward the trees for a few seconds. “Willa said his alibi checked out.”
“It does.”
She doesn’t look at me. “You saw everything?”
“Continuous work activity from his home network. Not two isolated emails. He was online throughout the attack window.”
She nods once. “Okay.”
No suspicion or argument. I thought she might push back because she doesn’t like him, but she accepts the evidence, just as I do.
Lorna reaches for her laptop again. She seems ready to end our interaction.
I search for a reason to prolong it and blurt out, “I do need one work package shipped here.”
Her hand stops before touching the keyboard.
“Not here exactly. To the post office in town.”
Her lips are tight. “Who is sending it?”
“Fenton.”
She leans back slightly.
I already know where this is going and regret telling her now. “He’s coordinating the Haverford amendment. They need wet signatures, so I gave him the post office address.”
“You gave Fenton the town?”
I grip the chair arms and struggle not to sound defensive. “It’s a public post office.”
“I know what it is.” Her tone isn’t frightened. She’s irritated.
That distinction matters, or so I tell myself. “I didn’t give him this address.”
“Hmm.” She opens the laptop but doesn’t look at the screen. “He’s still managing your schedule?”
“Some of it.” That “called into the study” feeling is creeping over me again.
She glances at me. “Your shipments?”
“Yes.”
“Your calls?” She sounds like she’s just curious, but it’s important to her.
“Not right now.”
That gets another brief look.
“I’m handling those myself.”
Lorna studies me as though trying to decide whether I expect credit.
I don’t. I keep my tone steady and don’t look away from her. “Fenton’s cleared. There’s no reason for me to treat him like a suspect.”
“I didn’t say there was.” The answer comes quickly enough that I stop.
Lorna shifts the laptop farther onto the table. “I don’t think Fenton attacked me.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t like him. That’s different.”
I almost smile because that’s honest, and I’m finally hearing her.
She sees it. “I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“He screened my calls to you for years. He decided what mattered enough to interrupt you. He canceled Willa without asking either of us. I don’t have to think he’s a criminal to think you gave him far too much control.”
The old instinct to explain how executive offices work rises automatically, but I fight it back. “That’s fair.”
Lorna’s fingers stop against the edge of her laptop. “You don’t have to agree with me because you’re trying to keep me from getting angry.”
“I’m not.”
She’s openly skeptical. “Then what changed?”
I look down at the porch boards, thinking about the thirty-eight-page underwriting package waiting on my phone. “I’ve spent this morning finding out how often I don’t know what’s in the documents people summarize for me.”
Her expression softens a little.
“That’s not Fenton’s fault,” I say. “I trained him to do it.”
She scoffs. “No.”
“I told him what I wanted. He got very good at giving it to me.”
Lorna looks away toward the yard. A squirrel runs along the top of the low stone wall near the drive, stops, then disappears behind the woodshed.
“I’ve got work too,” she says after a moment, clearly deciding not to argue about Fenton.
“I know.”
She looks at me.
I hear the mistake immediately. Not the words, but the history behind them. “I mean I know now.”
That doesn’t improve it much. She’s tenser than ever. Lorna closes her laptop completely. “I have a call in twenty minutes.” Her tone is cool again.
“I’ll get out of your way.” I stand.
“Chris?”
I stop at the top of the steps.
She looks at the laptop instead of me. “I wasn’t hinting that Fenton did it.”
“I know.”
“Yesterday, Willa told me his timeline excluded him. I’m not questioning that.”
“Okay.”
Her fingers tap once against the closed computer. “I’m questioning why, after everything, your first solution to being away from the office is still to have somebody else run every piece of your life for you.”
The words hurt because there’s no accusation I can disprove. I take a second before answering. “I don’t know how to change all of it in a day.”
“I didn’t ask you to change it in a day, but there’s no room in our marriage for Fenton.”
I grimace. “I’m sorry.”
She finally looks up. “I believe you are, but I don’t know if I even want to forgive you. I’m just stating a fact. I never want to have to deal personally with Fenton again.”
“I understand.” For a moment, neither of us says anything.
Then Lorna gives a small movement of her head toward the guesthouse. “You have a call too, probably.”
I check my phone to find three missed notifications. “Apparently.”
She almost smiles but diverts attention to her laptop instead of me. She’s clearly done with me for now.
I walk back down the steps and head toward the guesthouse with my phone vibrating again in my pocket.
Fenton is doing exactly the job I hired him to do. I need to change the parameters to meet Lorna’s reasonable request and make a mental note to add that to the list of things to discuss with him at the appropriate time.