Chapter 2 - NO ONE LEAVES YET
Richard’s first impulse was to order the doors locked.
Detective Lena Ortiz later told him that would have been a very Richard Hale thing to do.
Ava prevented it.
“Call 911.”
Richard looked at her.
She still held the capsule inside the folded napkin.
“You don’t know what that is.”
He called.
His private security director, Nolan Price, entered from the foyer thirty seconds later.
“What happened?”
Richard pointed toward the floor.
“No one leaves.”
Ava immediately said:
“Don’t physically stop anybody unless police tell you to.”
Nolan looked at Richard.
Richard did not enjoy being corrected twice in under a minute.
“Keep people here voluntarily.”
Better.
Victoria remained beside the table.
Her cheek had turned red.
She was staring at the capsule.
Richard looked at her.
“You’ve never seen that?”
“No.”
“You looked like you had.”
“I looked like somebody just found something in the drink you were about to swallow.”
Fair.
Paramedics arrived first.
Richard had not consumed any wine from the glass after Victoria added her medication.
They examined him anyway.
Blood pressure elevated.
Pulse irregular but familiar.
No acute symptoms.
One paramedic took the empty vial from Victoria.
“What was in this?”
She gave the name of Richard’s prescribed rescue medication.
The paramedic looked at Richard.
“You take that in red wine?”
Richard said:
“Sometimes.”
Victoria closed her eyes.
The paramedic asked:
“Did your cardiologist tell you to do that?”
“No.”
Richard hated medical professionals who asked questions they already knew the answer to.
Detective Ortiz arrived thirteen minutes later.
The dining room stopped being Richard’s dinner.
Good.
She photographed the capsule where Ava held it, then had a crime-scene technician transfer it.
The wine-soaked shards remained untouched.
Richard’s glass stem.
Bowl fragments.
Spill pattern.
Everything documented.
Victoria’s vial went separately.
Ava’s phone went into airplane mode after she agreed to preserve it.
Then Ortiz separated them.
Richard objected.
“No.”
Ortiz barely looked up.
“You don’t interview each other before I interview you.”
“I am not interviewing my daughter.”
“You were about to.”
He sat in the library.
Alone.
For seventeen minutes.
He did not like what silence did to certainty.
Ortiz came in.
“Why does your daughter secretly medicate your wine?”
Richard stiffened.
“That wording is unnecessarily dramatic.”
“Then improve it.”
He had experienced intermittent atrial arrhythmia for almost a year.
Usually controlled.
Occasionally his heart rate accelerated suddenly during stress.
Dr. Sameer Patel prescribed a fast-acting liquid medication to use under specific circumstances.
Not in alcohol.
Not secretly.
Richard had created the secrecy.
He was negotiating a controlling investment in Hale Development with Westhaven Capital.
The deal included key-person insurance review.
Richard did not want every dinner episode becoming a rumor that the founder was medically unstable.
So at private events, Victoria sometimes carried the medication.
If Richard gave her a discreet signal, she added the measured dose to water.
Tonight—
wine had been in front of him.
“She knew I wanted it.”
Ortiz asked:
“Did you signal her?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before the toast.”
“Why not take it yourself?”
Richard looked at her.
“Because people watch me.”
Ortiz wrote that down.
“Apparently.”
Then:
“Who knows about this routine?”
“Victoria.”
“Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Household staff?”
“No.”
“Executives?”
Richard started to say no.
Stopped.
“Graham may.”
“Who is Graham?”
“Graham Mercer. Chief operating officer of Hale Development.”
“Dinner guest?”
“Yes.”
“Seat?”
“Seven.”
Ortiz wrote.
“How would he know?”
“He was present when Victoria did it during a ski trip in January.”
“Anyone else?”
Richard remembered Thomas.
His younger brother had been there too.
Possibly.
Then Victoria’s interview.
She told the same story.
Mostly.
One difference.
She said Richard had asked her to keep the medication routine secret not just from business colleagues.
From his own board.
Richard had omitted that.
Ortiz returned.
“Your daughter says you explicitly told her the board could not know.”
Richard’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“Why leave that out?”
“I did not consider it relevant to the capsule.”
“People trying to hurt you tend to care about what you’re hiding.”
Then the laboratory called with a preliminary screening.
The black capsule contained a sedating prescription medication with blood-pressure-lowering effects.
Not prescribed to Richard.
Combined with alcohol and Richard’s heart medication, it could have caused a serious medical emergency.
Not guaranteed death.
Not harmless.
Richard stared at the wall.
Ortiz asked:
“Who knew enough about your health to predict that combination?”
Richard had an answer now.
Too many people.
Then Nolan Price entered the doorway.
“Detective.”
Ortiz looked over.
“Our dining-room camera stopped recording for fifty-two seconds before Ava’s phone video.”
Richard frowned.
“Why?”
“Privacy mode.”
“Who activated it?”
Nolan hesitated.
“The command came through the household master system.”
Richard looked at him.
“That system is mine.”
May you like
Nolan nodded.
“Yes.”
