Chapter 6 - The House of Cards
The private visitor room of the hospital had heavy security glass and two armed guards outside. At three that afternoon, Michael Foster was permitted thirty minutes to speak with me under Detective Miller’s supervision.
Michael looked like a ghost of the man who had married my sister three years ago. The crisp, athletic corporate lawyer was gone. In his place sat an emaciated wreck with trembling hands, sunken eyes, and clothes that hung loose on his frame.
"I didn't know about the poisoning, Liz," Michael choked out the moment the door clicked shut. Tears spilled down his hollow cheeks. "I swear on my soul, I swear on my mother’s life, I didn't know they were killing your baby. If I had known, I would have killed them myself."
"You knew she wasn't pregnant, Michael," Daniel said, his voice deadly quiet, stepping in front of my wheelchair. "You lived in the same bed with her. How do you sleep next to a woman for eight months and not know her pregnancy is made of silicone and lies?"
Michael covered his face with his hands, weeping uncontrollably. "We haven't shared a bed in over a year! Chloe told me she had severe pelvic pain, vaginismus, and high-risk uterine irritability. She moved into the east wing guest suite seven months ago. She locked the door every night. Whenever I tried to go to her doctor's appointments, Martha intercepted me. She said Chloe's obstetrician was an exclusive, holistic specialist who didn't permit men in the examination suites during pelvic evaluations."
"You were a coward, Michael," I said, cold tears cutting tracks through the bruising on my cheeks. "You suspected something was rotting in that house, and you looked the other way because Arthur promised to make you a senior partner at his firm."
"I was blind!" Michael cried out. "I thought she was just vain! I thought she was ashamed of gaining weight! But three weeks ago, I found her discarded laptop open on the island in the guest kitchen. She forgot to close the browser."
He looked up at me, his gaze pleading for understanding, though he knew he deserved none.
"There were emails, Liz. Hundreds of them. Between Chloe, Martha, and an attorney named Harold Vance—your father's second cousin in Albany. They had located an undocumented woman, an eighteen-year-old immigrant who came to their private clinic seeking shelter. They offered her fifty thousand dollars to carry an embryo to term, telling her she was acting as a legal surrogate for an infertile couple. But the contracts were completely fraudulent. They intended to take the child the moment it cleared the birth canal, forge a home-birth certificate naming Chloe as the biological mother, and deposit the infant into the Commonwealth Avenue residence before the trust deadline expired on November first."
"And when did you find the poison receipts, Michael?" Detective Miller asked sharply.
"Two days before the shower," Michael whispered, his head hanging in shame. "I found a leather lockbox hidden in Martha's greenhouse behind the orchid trays. The key was on the same ring as Chloe's car keys. Inside were the empty glass vials of Cloprostenol, the tracking slips, and a handwritten ledger in Martha’s handwriting. It documented the exact milligram dosages added to Elizabeth's tea canisters every week."
"And you let her attend the baby shower anyway?" Daniel’s voice cracked with fury, his hands curling into fists. "You knew they murdered our baby, and you let Elizabeth walk into that house surrounded by fifty witnesses while those two monsters laughed at her?"
"I went straight to the FBI office in Boston!" Michael yelled, his voice breaking into a desperate rasp. "They told me they couldn't act on a state homicide charge without corroborating evidence and a jurisdiction handoff to the Suffolk County DA! They told me to go home, act normal, and wait for the warrant! I begged Elizabeth not to go to that shower! I texted her that morning—I told her to stay home!"
I remembered the text. *Liz, please don't come today. It’s toxic. Stay with Daniel.*
I had thought it was just Michael’s usual cynicism about high-society vanity. I had thought he was just embarrassed by Chloe’s ostentatious display. I had ignored the warning because I had wanted to show my family that their cruel toasts could not break me.
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"And when Martha pushed her?" Miller pressed.
"I was in the driveway talking to the federal agent on the phone," Michael said, shivering. "I heard the crash through the window. I heard the screaming. When I ran inside, Martha was walking down the sweeping staircase, fixing her pearls, telling the caterers that Elizabeth had suffered a nervous breakdown and tripped over her own heels. That's when I knew they would never stop. That's when I drove straight to the First District."
