Chapter 5 - The Legal Hammer Drops
I didn't invite Greg in.
Wes stood two paces behind me, his arms crossed, a silent, immovable wall. The afternoon breeze was warm, rustling the lilacs beside the porch, carrying the sweet scent of fresh grass into the tense, suffocating space between us.
"It looks like an envelope, Greg," I said.
Greg took a deep breath, his knuckles whitening around the paper. "Roman Kesler’s attorney just served this to my managing partner’s receptionist at my office. In the middle of an executive committee meeting."
"Then you should probably open it and read it," I replied.
"I did read it!" he shouted, losing his corporate composure for a fraction of a second. "It's a formal notice of intent to file a thirty-six thousand dollar civil tort for intentional property damage, naming Naomi and Colby as primary respondents, with an attached referral to the county district attorney's juvenile division!"
He stepped an inch closer, his eyes boring into mine. "Thirty-six thousand dollars, Faith! For flour! Naomi said—"
"Stop," I said, cutting him off with the sharpness of a razor. "Before you say another word, Greg, did you look at the exhibit attached to page four?"
Greg froze.
His eyes shifted slightly. The confidence, the practiced courtroom intimidation that he used to bulldoze small-town zoning boards, hesitated.
"What exhibit?" he asked, his voice dropping slightly.
"Roman included the stills," Wes said from behind me. "Open the envelope, Greg. Look at page four."
Greg stared at us for five long seconds. Then, with jerky, irritated motions, he pulled the thick stack of papers from the manila sleeve. He flipped past the legal summons, past the contractor's itemized remediation invoice, and stopped.
His eyes dilated.
The full-page, color photograph Roman’s lawyer had included was even clearer than the one I had on my phone. It showed the service corridor. It showed Naomi’s face, captured under sixty-cycle fluorescent lighting, grinning down at Colby as she handed him the five-pound sack of Gold Medal flour.
Greg’s mouth parted slightly. The color drained from his cheeks, leaving him looking suddenly fifty-five instead of forty-five.
"She told me..." Greg’s voice was barely audible over the wind in the lilacs. "She told me Colby found the bag in the venue kitchen. She said he was carrying it out to the dumpster and dropped it into a low vent."
"She brought it from your house, Greg," I said softly, feeling no joy in the destruction of the man’s pride, only a cold, clinical necessity. "She brought it in her straw bag. Colby told Wes and me that she promised him a new Mongoose BMX bike if he shut down Laya’s party."
Greg didn't move. He stood on my porch like a marble statue, staring down at his wife's handwriting on the venue contract, and then back at the photograph of her face.
"Why?" he whispered. It wasn't a question directed at me. It was the desperate, bewildered groan of a man whose domestic life had just collapsed beneath the weight of an ugly, unfathomable truth.
"Because Laya had thirty-one kids at her party," Wes said bluntly. "And Colby only had four. Because Faith saved for four months to give our daughter something beautiful, and Naomi couldn't stand that people loved my wife more than they feared her."
Greg slowly slid the papers back into the envelope. His shoulders, usually pulled back in an aggressive executive posture, slumped forward.
"The juvenile intake officer called my office at two," Greg said, his voice hollowed out. "They want Naomi and Colby to come in for an interview tomorrow morning at nine."
"You should take a good criminal defense attorney with you," I said. "Because Elena Delgado spent two hours in the ER with her asthmatic five-year-old on Saturday, and she’s already given a statement to the county sheriff."
Greg looked up. The anger was completely gone, replaced by a cold, sickening horror. "Mateo Delgado was there?"
"Yes," I said. "And the Brennans. And the Quans."
Greg closed his eyes. The Delgados were clients of his firm. Dr. Delgado sat on the regional hospital board that approved Greg's commercial leasing contracts. The web of social and professional connections that Naomi had thought she was manipulating had just turned into a garrote around her husband's neck.
"Faith..." Greg began, his voice breaking. "Can’t we... can’t I just write Roman a check? Can’t we make this go away without the police?"
"No," Wes answered before I could. "Roman isn't doing this for spite, Greg. His insurance company requires the police report to cover the balance of the twenty-four thousand dollars in ductwork replacement. If he drops the report, he pays out of pocket and his hall closes permanently. Would you pay twenty-four grand out of your pocket to protect the woman who vandalized your livelihood?"
Greg didn't answer. He couldn't.
"And what about Laya?" I asked, my voice trembling with an anger that had been simmering for forty-eight hours. "Did you bring her a birthday present, Greg? Did you bring an apology for the eight-year-old who spent her birthday watching her friends choke on dust while your son laughed on the bench?"
Greg looked toward the floorboards of the porch.
"I didn't know," he whispered. "I swear to God, Faith, I didn't know."
"You know now," I said.
He stood there for another ten seconds, looking like a man who had walked into his own home and found the foundation entirely rotten. Then, without another word, he turned, walked down the wooden steps, and got into his luxury car.
May you like
He didn't drive away immediately. Through the tinted windshield, I saw him rest his forehead against the steering wheel, his shoulders shaking with silent, dry sobs.
***
