Chapter 5 - The Glass Shatters
The kitchen seemed to tilt on its axis, the hum of the dying refrigerator fading into a high-pitched ringing in Helen’s ears.
"Amber?" Helen repeated, her voice dropping to a fragile whisper.
"The twenty-four-year-old girl who started at Franklin Motor Service in January?"
Donna gasped on the other end of the line, realizing too late what she had just revealed.
"Oh, God, Helen... I thought you knew! Robert told Wade that you two had an understanding and were separating quietly after Thanksgiving!"
Helen didn't scream, and she didn't cry; she simply pressed the red button to end the call and set the phone face-down on the counter.
Twenty-eight years of marriage had dissolved into complete fabrication in less than two hours.
The rusted refrigerator, the frozen fish, the fake bags, the secret Bahamas accounts, and now a twenty-four-year-old receptionist in a Cleveland hotel.
Robert had spent the last year manufacturing counterfeit purses, selling them to Helen’s closest friends and coworkers, and funneling the proceeds into an escape fund.
He was letting Helen carry a fake bag to work so she would act as a walking advertisement to swindle the nurses in her department.
She had been his unwitting sales representative, lending her thirty years of sterling community reputation to legitimize his criminal fraud.
Helen looked at the thirty-seven gold logos gleaming under the light, then looked at the black composition notebook.
May you like
If federal investigators or local police raided this house, Helen’s name was on the property deed, and her coworkers would swear she was the one who introduced them to the bags.
Robert was setting her up to take the fall for trademark infringement and grand larceny while he slipped away with Amber and two hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
