“He set up the corporate accounts at Chicago First,” Frank said.
“The same bank where you keep your joint household funds.”
“The utilities,” I said, my voice dry. “Are they in her name too?”
Frank pressed a key, and a utility report appeared on the screen, showing the monthly water and electric charges for Unit 14B.
“The bills go directly to the Oak Park post office box,” Frank said.
“They are paid by automatic drafts from the Apex corporate checking account.”
“How much has been paid through that account?” I asked.
“Over fifty thousand dollars in rent and expenses since the lease was signed,” Frank said.
He checked his watch again, the digital screen flashing with the new hour.
“But that is not the only thing the company account is used for,” he said.
He opened a folder on his desktop labeled with Lauren’s name.
“She has a public social media page where she shares updates with her family in Michigan,” Frank said.
“I ran a search on her public profile last night.”
He opened an image file, and the screen filled with a bright, high-resolution photograph.
It was taken in a small, sunny park near the lake, the grass green and freshly cut.
Ethan was sitting on a wooden bench, wearing his navy fleece jacket with the hospital logo on the breast.
His left hand, still wearing his gold wedding band, was resting flat and heavy against Lauren’s pregnant belly.
She was smiling into the camera, her head tilted toward his shoulder.
I stared at his fingers, the way they curved over the soft knit of her maternity dress.
“He looks happy,” I said, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
“The photo was uploaded four months ago,” Frank said, his low tone flat and unhurried.
“The caption is at the bottom.”
I looked down, my eyes focusing on the small black text typed beneath the image.
“Building our little future,” I read.
I stood up, pulling my wool coat tighter around my shoulders.
“I need copies of these documents,” I said.
“I already sent the secure link to Rebecca Sloan’s office,” Frank said.
He closed the laptop with a quiet click.
“She has everything,” he added.
I walked out of the office and drove straight to the hospital.
At noon, the hospital cafeteria was crowded with medical residents and visitors.
The air was thick with the smell of steam tables and fried onions.
Arthur Vance was sitting at a small table by the window, a container of yogurt and a bottle of mineral water in front of him.
He adjusted his wire-frame glasses as I sat down opposite him.
“You look tired, Claire,” Arthur said, his baritone voice quiet against the surrounding noise.
“Did you finish the vascular bypass case from this morning?” he asked.
“We finished at eleven,” I said.
“Arthur, I need to ask you about our procurement vendors.”
He set his spoon down and looked at me, his expression turning professional.
“What about them?” he asked.
“We just finished the quarterly review with the board.”
“Does Memorial Hospital do any business with Apex Medical Logistics?” I asked.
Arthur shook his head slowly, his glasses sliding down his nose slightly.
“No,” he said.
“We use Great Lakes Transport for all of our regional logistics.”
“And we have a national contract with a firm out of Cincinnati for everything else,” he added.
“I have never heard of Apex.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“They are registered as a medical supply and transport company.”
“I would know if they were on our vendor registry,” Arthur said, leaning forward.
“Ethan manages our internal logistics, but he has no authority to sign contracts with outside vendors,” he said.
“Why do you ask?”
“I saw the name on some shipping manifests,” I lied, keeping my voice steady.
“I wanted to make sure our inventory counts were correct.”
“I can have the compliance office run a search on the name,” Arthur said.
“But I can tell you right now, they are not on our payroll.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, standing up from the table.
“Take care of yourself, Claire,” Arthur said, his eyes kind behind his lenses.
“You have been putting in too many hours lately,” he added.
“I will,” I said.
At three o’clock, I walked into Rebecca Sloan’s law office on Michigan Avenue.
The silver-framed certificates on her wall caught the gray afternoon light.
Rebecca was already waiting for me, a thick stack of bank statements spread across her desk.
She tapped her silver pen against her legal pad, the rapid clicking sound filling the room.
“Frank sent over the Apex files,” Rebecca said.
“I spent the last hour cross-referencing the transactions with your personal savings accounts.”
She slid a yellow sheet of paper toward me, covered in her small, precise handwriting.
“Your surgeon’s salary is deposited into your joint checking account twice a month,” Rebecca said.
“And you took twelve weekend call shifts last winter, correct?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I worked thirty-six hours straight on three separate weekends.”
“Look at the transfer dates,” Rebecca said, pointing her pen at the spreadsheet.
“Every time your overtime pay cleared, Ethan made a matching transfer to Apex Logistics.”
I looked at the numbers, the black ink crisp on the page.
“Five thousand eight hundred dollars on the twelfth of November,” I said.
“That was the weekend of the multi-car accident on the bridge.”
“Exactly,” Rebecca said.
“He transferred five thousand five hundred of it to the Apex corporate account the following Monday.”
She leaned back in her leather chair, her expression tightening.
“He did not just build a second family, Claire,” Rebecca said.
Her voice landed hard in the quiet room.
“He made you pay for the lease,” she said.
I stared at the figures on the page, the math simple and cold.
“The money I worked for,” I said.
“The shifts where I didn’t sleep.”
“It paid for Lauren’s apartment on Grand Avenue,” Rebecca said.
“We have the direct pipeline documented now.”
“What do we do next?” I asked, rubbing my left wrist where my watch sat.
“We need to protect the remaining physical property,” Rebecca said.
She wrote a quick note on her pad.
“Do you have the spare keys to the lake house?” she asked.