Chapter 2 - The Paper Trail
The silence in the kitchen was shattered by the line click. I lowered the phone and looked at Colette. Her face was gray.
"Who was that?" I asked. My voice wasn't loud, but it carried the weight of fifteen years of fire scene investigations—the tone I used when I knew someone was lying about how a blaze started. "Colette. Who was on that phone?"
She sank into one of the tall kitchen chairs, her burgundy dress pooling around her knees. The composure she had maintained in the driveway was entirely gone, replaced by a brittle, trembling exhaustion.
"It's not what you think," she whispered.
"You told me Kaden was at Ridgemont Academy doing well in his honors classes," I said, stepping closer to the island. "Who was that man talking about a package at a warehouse? What payment?"
"He's... he's a administrator's assistant," she lied, but her eyes darted away, betrayed by her own reflex.
"I'm going to Ridgemont," I said, grabbing my truck keys off the table.
"No! Conrad, wait!" She scrambled up from the chair, tripping slightly on her heels as she ran to block the front door. "If you go there, you'll ruin everything! Kaden isn't at the main campus tonight!"
I stopped dead in my tracks. The world seemed to tilt on its axis. "What do you mean he isn't at the main campus?"
Colette buried her face in her hands. A sob broke from her chest, but I couldn't tell if it was genuine remorse or the despair of a gambler whose bluff had just been called.
"He was suspended three weeks ago," she whispered.
The words hit me like a physical blow. "Suspended? For what?"
"Cheating," she sobbed. "Plagiarism on his term exams. But it wasn't his fault, Conrad! Someone framed him! Spencer said he could fix it—Spencer is on the board of trustees at Ridgemont! He said he could clear Kaden's record and transfer him to the secondary honor program, but it cost money! Extra tuition!"
"Extra tuition?" I stared at her, my mind racing through our joint bank accounts. "How much money, Colette?"
She didn't answer. She couldn't look at me.
I walked past her, pulled out my laptop from my work bag, and logged directly into our primary household account. My hands were remarkably steady, driven by pure adrenaline.
The account history loaded. Over the last four months, six major wire transfers had been made out of our home equity line—transfers totaling over ninety thousand dollars. All payable to an entity listed as Apex Consulting Group LLC.
Ninety thousand dollars. Almost our entire liquid savings, gone.
"You gave ninety thousand dollars to Spencer?" my voice was dangerously quiet.
"He said it was for legal fees and administrative appeals!" she cried out. "He promised me Kaden wouldn't have a record! If Kaden got expelled, he’d never get into a good university! You were working fourteen-hour days, Conrad! You were always busy, always tired! I was trying to protect our family!"
"Protect our family?" I roared, the rage finally breaking through my professional calm. "You lied to me for months! You let me believe our fourteen-year-old son was thriving while he was suspended and tucked away somewhere! Where is he, Colette? Where is my son right now?"
She trembled violently, pulling her phone out of her pocket with shaking fingers. "He's staying at... at a dormitory apartment near the annex campus downtown. Spencer said it was a private residence for students in transition."
"Give me the address," I demanded, snatching the phone from her hand as she pulled up a map pin.
The address was in the industrial corridor near the old rail yards on the north side of the county—a location I knew intimately because I had conducted safety inspections on those exact dilapidated structures three months ago. They were abandoned warehouses, unsafe for human habitation, and currently flagged for severe fire code violations.
A cold, terrifying realization settled into my stomach. Spencer wasn't an educational consultant. And my son wasn't in a transition program.
I looked at Colette with a mixture of disgust and cold determination. "Get in the truck."
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"What?" she blinked through her tears.
"You're coming with me," I said, pulling my heavy fire marshal coat off the rack. "And on the way, you're going to tell me every single word Spencer ever said to you, or the next call I make isn't to my lawyer—it's to the State Police."