CHAPTER TWO: THE WOMAN AT THE PHARMACY

Three days earlier, I had met Caroline Lawson outside a pharmacy in Evanston.
I knew who she was because Jessica had pointed her out at a company holiday party two years before.
Caroline had been standing beside a black sedan with a prescription bag in her hand.
She had looked exhausted, but she recognized me immediately.
“David Mercer?” she asked.
I stopped beside my car.
“Yes, and you’re Caroline Lawson.”
“I was hoping I might run into you,” she said.
She glanced toward the pharmacy doors and lowered her voice.
“I cannot ask you to believe what I’m about to say.”
I assumed she wanted to discuss a charitable fundraiser or something connected to Jessica’s marketing department.
Instead, she told me that Richard had been using his position at Lawson Development to intimidate employees who tried to question the company’s finances.


She did not begin with my marriage.
She began with a woman named Elaine Porter, the former accounting manager who had resigned the previous spring.
According to Caroline, Elaine had discovered unexplained payments routed through a small vendor called Marshpoint Consulting.
Elaine had tried to raise the issue with Richard and had been told that her job would disappear if she pursued it.
Two weeks later, she was gone.
Caroline said Richard had started keeping important records in a private office that even the company controller could not access.
Her husband had also become obsessed with protecting a particular transaction involving a vacant industrial property near the river.
I asked why she was telling me any of this.
Caroline pressed her lips together.
“Because your wife knows something that can help Elaine,”

she said.
I felt an uncomfortable tightening in my chest.
“Jessica works in communications,” I replied.
“She doesn’t approve real-estate transactions.”
“I know what she does,” Caroline said.
“I also know what my husband has asked her to do for him.”
She took a folded sheet of paper from her purse.
It contained the name of a lawyer, a telephone number, and the words independent employee counsel.
“Please do not confront either of them until you have spoken to someone who understands the risk,” she said.
I looked at the paper without accepting it.
“Are you saying Jessica is in trouble?”
“I am saying Richard makes trouble look like a favor until the person who accepts it cannot leave.”
I asked whether she meant Jessica and Richard were having an affair.
Caroline closed her eyes.
“Yes,” she said.
“I believe they are.”
I wanted to accuse her of guessing.
I wanted to ask how long she had known and why she had chosen me.
Instead, I asked what secret she was protecting.
Caroline held the paper between two fingers.
“My husband has been telling people that I am too unstable to manage my own affairs,” she said.
“He has been telling our daughter the same thing.”
Her voice cracked when she mentioned her daughter.
“I’m not unstable, David.”
She reached into her purse again and showed me the corner of a medical appointment card.
“I have a neurological condition that is being treated, but Richard has decided every symptom is evidence that I cannot be trusted.”
I told her I was sorry.
She shook her head.
“Don’t be sorry for me yet.”
Then she said the sentence that had kept me awake for three nights.
“Richard doesn’t know that I have already preserved copies of the documents he believes he destroyed.”
She finally handed me the lawyer’s details.
“Your wife was copied on an instruction that could place her in serious danger if she helps him hide what happened,” Caroline said.
“I need you to warn her before Richard decides she knows too much.”
I took the paper because I could no longer pretend this was an ordinary conversation.
Caroline thanked me and drove away.
I sat in my car for ten minutes.
I did not call Jessica.
I did not call the lawyer either.
I convinced myself that a stranger’s damaged marriage had no right to become a verdict on mine.
On Friday evening, that excuse stopped working.