Chapter 5 - The Name Behind the Letter P
Grant did not investigate the notebook alone.
That was one of the first pieces of advice his attorney gave him.
“Preserve what you find. Don’t start contacting people and accusing them.”
So Grant photographed the pages, secured the financial records and gave copies to his attorney.
Then he took Piper to Claire’s backyard.
They spent an hour drawing chalk roads across the patio.
Piper made a pink house.
A blue house.
Then a small square far away from both.
“What’s that one?”
Piper stopped coloring.
“Aunt Claire’s.”
Grant did not ask why it was far away.
Instead he drew a crooked tree beside it.
Piper corrected him.
“Trees don’t look like that.”
It was the first time she had sounded like herself.
That evening, Grant received a call from an unfamiliar Columbus number.
A woman named Paige Ellison asked whether he was Nadine Mercer’s husband.
Grant almost hung up.
Then she said, “I think my name is probably in something you found.”
P.
Paige had known Nadine for eleven years.
They had worked together at an event-planning company before Nadine moved into corporate marketing.
According to Paige, Nadine had lent her money eighteen months earlier when Paige’s small catering business nearly collapsed.
Not thousands.
Tens of thousands.
Paige had been repaying her.
Grant leaned against Claire’s garage wall.
“Why would Nadine lend you money we didn’t have?”
Paige sounded embarrassed.
“She told me it was hers.”
The hotel charge had been for a weekend vendor event. Paige had reimbursed Nadine afterward.
“Why are you calling me now?”
“Because Nadine called this morning.”
Grant straightened.
“She told me if anyone contacted me, I should say the money was payment for consulting work.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
Grant looked through the kitchen window.
Piper sat on Claire’s lap eating macaroni and cheese.
Paige continued.
“There’s something else.”
Nadine had been under financial pressure before she met Grant.
She had helped her younger sister through a bankruptcy and carried old personal debt she never fully disclosed.
Paige believed Nadine’s obsession with money came from watching her own parents lose their house when she was seventeen.
That did not excuse what had happened.
But for the first time, Grant saw something more complicated than simple cruelty.
Nadine had married into a beautiful house, a stable income and a family that already had a dead woman permanently built into its emotional architecture.
And she had become terrified of losing all three.
“Did she ever talk about Piper?” Grant asked.
Paige hesitated.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“She used to say Piper was the one person you’d always choose over her.”
Grant shut his eyes.
Paige added quietly, “At first she said it like a joke.”
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Then came the part Grant did not expect.
“About two months ago, she stopped joking.”
