Chapter 14 - The Woman Behind the Board
Celia Voss spent the next week refusing to speak. Her attorneys argued that the recording from the boardroom had been obtained illegally and that the files from North Quay were unreliable because David Henderson had created them.
The public believed the opposite. Newspapers called Celia the architect of a poisoned river. Residents held photographs of Caleb Rusk outside the courthouse. Henderson Meridian’s stock collapsed, and the state placed the company into receivership.
Margaret testified for six hours.
When she returned to the safe apartment, she removed her shoes and sat on the floor.
“I thought I would feel free,” she said.
“What do you feel?”
“Like I’m standing in the wreckage of a house I never wanted.”
I sat across from her. “You don’t have to rebuild it.”
“That is the problem. Everyone wants something rebuilt. The workers want the company. The town wants the river. David wants his confession to mean he was better than he was.”
“David is dead.”
“Dead people still make demands.”
She looked at me. “And what do you want?”
The answer was too close to say safely.
Before I could respond, Shah entered with a file. “We found the original crash report.”
She spread photographs across the table. The images showed David’s car against a guardrail, its front end crushed. A second vehicle had struck it from behind. The tire marks led away from the scene.
“Victor’s car?” I asked.
“A company vehicle. It was reported stolen two days later.”
Margaret studied the photograph. “David’s door was open.”
“He was pulled out before the car caught fire,” Shah said. “Victor left him alive.”
“Then who killed him?”
Shah pointed to a small mark near the windshield. “The medical examiner found a sedative in his blood. He lost control after the brakes failed, but the sedative made it impossible for him to respond.”
“Celia?” I asked.
“Owen bought the drug. Victor followed the car. The evidence suggests Celia ordered the operation, but we need testimony linking her directly.”
“You have the boardroom recording.”
“She never says the words ‘kill David.’ Her attorney will call it a business threat.”
Margaret stared at the photographs. “She said he made a mistake believing she would continue negotiating after he destroyed the company’s protection.”
“A jury may hear that as motive,” Shah said. “We need the instruction.”
Noah Kline provided it.
He testified that Celia summoned him to a private board meeting the afternoon before the crash. She told him David would confess unless he was frightened into silence. She ordered Noah to prepare a legal defense for the company and instructed Owen to make the problem disappear.
“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” Margaret asked him after the hearing.
Noah looked at the floor. “I was afraid.”
“So was Alma. She still told the truth.”
“Alma had nothing left to lose.”
“Neither did David.”
Noah flinched. “I know.”
Outside the courthouse, reporters asked Margaret whether she intended to divorce David posthumously through the estate. She ignored them.
I walked beside her toward the river. The water moved beneath the bridge, brown but alive.
“You were right,” I said.
“About what?”
“You did use me.”
She stopped.
“I should have told you I left the apartment to meet Celia. I should have trusted you with the plan.”
“You didn’t know me well enough to trust me.”
“I knew you well enough to know you would follow.”
That was not an apology. It was an admission of how much she had learned about me.
“Margaret, this cannot continue if every truth arrives after the danger.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
She looked toward the river. “I am trying.”
May you like
I wanted to take her hand. I wanted to tell her that trying was enough. Instead, I left the space between us untouched.
Across the water, a siren began to rise.
