Chapter 5 - The Man Who Wasn't Out of Town.
Owen Price answered his phone on the fourth call.
Daniel’s attorney insisted no one should question him without counsel.
Officer Hayes ignored the comment because Owen was not in the house and had not asked for representation.
Hayes put the call on speaker.
“Owen, this is Officer Hayes with the Northbridge Police Department.”
A pause followed.
Then Owen said, “Is Daniel okay?”
Claire looked at Rebecca.
Hayes’s expression stayed neutral.
“Why would you ask that?”
Another pause.
“I heard there was some kind of family problem.”
“Who told you?”
“Daniel texted me.”
Daniel immediately shook his head.
“I did not.”
Hayes looked at him but continued speaking into the phone.
“Owen, where are you right now?”
“In Chicago.”
Rebecca silently turned her phone toward Hayes, showing him the parking charge.
Hayes’s eyes narrowed.
“Are you sure?”
Owen laughed nervously.
“What kind of question is that?”
“A simple one.”
Silence.
Then the call disconnected.
Daniel swore under his breath.
Claire stared at him.
“You told us he was in Chicago.”
“He told me he was.”
“Yet he asked whether you were okay before he asked what happened.”
Daniel looked exhausted.
“Claire, stop acting like every sentence is proof of a conspiracy.”
Rebecca folded her arms.
“When every sentence contradicts the one before it, people start noticing.”
Hayes stepped into the hallway to request a unit check Owen’s apartment.
Claire sat down for the first time in nearly an hour.
The adrenaline that had kept her upright was beginning to fade.
Her head ached.
Her marriage felt unreal.
The people around her felt even less familiar.
Evelyn approached slowly.
“Claire.”
Claire did not look at her.
Evelyn sat opposite her.
“I am sorry.”
“For which part?”
Evelyn’s face tightened.
“For telling you the camera was broken.”
“Why did you lie?”
Evelyn glanced toward Daniel.
“Because he said the footage would make an accident look worse than it was.”
Claire finally looked at her.
“How would he know what the footage showed if he had not seen it?”
Evelyn went still.
It was a small question.
It changed everything.
Daniel turned from the fireplace.
“I reviewed the live feed after the plate broke.”
Rebecca immediately asked, “Before or after you told Owen to remove eleven minutes?”
“I never told Owen to remove anything.”
Marissa spoke from the doorway.
“You called him at 8:19.”
Daniel looked at her.
“How would you know?”
Marissa lifted her phone.
“Because you used mine.”
Claire stared at Daniel.
Marissa continued.
“You said your battery was dead.”
Daniel’s shoulders dropped slightly.
“I called him because he knows the security system.”
“At 8:19?” Rebecca asked.
“Yes.”
“Two minutes after the footage begins missing?”
Daniel’s attorney interrupted through the speakerphone.
“Daniel, stop answering questions.”
This time Daniel listened.
He walked into the study and closed the door.
Claire heard the lock click.
Rebecca watched him go.
“He’s scared.”
Claire looked down at her hands.
“So am I.”
A new officer arrived twenty minutes later with unexpected news.
Owen’s apartment was empty.
His car was gone.
But a neighbor had seen him loading bags into the trunk less than an hour earlier.
Claire felt the floor tilt beneath her.
“Running?”
Hayes answered carefully.
“Leaving quickly.”
Rebecca asked whether they could track his company phone.
The officer said a request was already being made.
Then Charles spoke from the staircase.
“There’s something else.”
Everyone looked at him.
Charles walked to the dining table and removed a key from his pocket.
“The company has an off-site records suite downtown.”
Daniel’s study door opened.
Charles continued anyway.
“Owen has access.”
Daniel’s face hardened.
“Dad, don’t.”
Charles looked at his son.
“I should have done this months ago.”
He handed the key to Hayes.
“If the missing audit files still exist anywhere, they will be there.”
Daniel stepped into the room.
“You have no idea what you’re doing.”
Charles’s expression was tired.
“I know exactly what I’m doing.”
Then he looked at Claire.
“There is one more thing you deserve to know.”
While officers searched for Owen, Claire remembered a conversation from the previous month.
Owen had stopped her after a board luncheon and asked whether she still kept personal copies of trust documents.
Claire had laughed and said Daniel handled most of that paperwork.
Owen’s expression had tightened.
He told her, “You should always keep your own copies.”
At the time, Claire assumed he was making a general professional suggestion.
Now the comment sounded like a warning he had been too afraid to state clearly.
She told Hayes.
The officer wrote it down without reacting.
Rebecca asked whether Owen had ever contacted Claire privately.
Only once.
He had sent her a blank email at 2:11 a.m. three weeks earlier.
Claire had assumed it was a mistake and deleted it.
Her deleted folder still contained the message.
Attached to the email, hidden beneath a broken preview icon, was a tiny file named BACKUP_INDEX.
Claire’s pulse quickened.
The file would not open on her phone.
Hayes asked her not to alter it.
For the first time, Owen’s disappearance looked less like guilt and more like fear.
Claire stood.
Charles hesitated so long that everyone seemed to hold their breath.
“The four-point-two-million-dollar transfer did not go to an unknown account.”
Claire waited.
Charles looked toward Daniel.
“It went to a company registered in your mother’s name.”
Claire thought he meant Evelyn.
May you like
Then Charles added quietly, “Your late mother.”
The Eleven Missing Minutes
