“Mrs. Whitmore,” she said, “this was left under the garden table.”
Eleanor opened it to check her phone and wallet.
Everything was wet.
But something else had been placed inside.
A cream envelope.
No stamp.
No name.
Daniel noticed it.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
Eleanor opened it.
Inside was a photocopy of a bank transfer.
Forty-eight thousand dollars.
Sender: Whitmore Heritage Foundation.
Recipient: Cobalt Event Consulting LLC.
Eleanor stared at it.
She chaired the foundation.
No payment that large could legally leave the account without her authorization.
“I never approved this.”
Daniel leaned closer.
“What is Cobalt?”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
A handwritten line appeared across the bottom of the page.
CHECK THE WEDDING INVOICES BEFORE SHE DELETES THEM.
Daniel read it twice.
Then his eyes lifted toward the staircase.
Madison was still upstairs.
Eleanor understood the meaning at the same moment he did.
The hose had not been the beginning of the disaster.
It might have been the distraction.
Daniel started toward the stairs.
Eleanor caught his sleeve.
“Don’t confront her yet.”
He turned.
“Mom—”
“If somebody put this in my bag, they were afraid to tell us openly.”
Daniel looked down at the transfer.
The anger in his face changed shape.
It became focus.
Outside, thunder rolled somewhere beyond the trees, though the afternoon sky was still bright.
Upstairs, a door closed.
Then another.
Eleanor tightened Daniel’s jacket around her wet shoulders.
For the first time since the water struck her, she was no longer embarrassed.
She was afraid.
Because Madison had not simply wanted to humiliate her.
Someone had been moving money through the family foundation, and if the warning was real, the engagement party had hidden something far more dangerous than cruelty.
Daniel folded the paper carefully.
“Then we find out what she was trying to bury.”
Eleanor looked toward the staircase.
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