“And when your wife tried to bribe her to spy on me, Denise handed the money back.”

Gertrude went white.

And from the doorway, where she’d been standing unnoticed, Garrett and Douglas’s mother spoke.

“What bribe, Gertrude?” Rosalyn asked, her voice unsteady.

No one answered her, so Garrett told her — the envelope, the twenty thousand, all of it.

Rosalyn looked at her daughter-in-law like she’d never seen her before.

Douglas tried to get between them.

“Mother, you don’t understand how this business works.