Page 57 of My Dear Mr. Corporate

CHAPTER 26

Tate

“Where the hell is he?” I asked my uncle and grabbed him by the shirt. Behind me Detective Marks placed a hand on my arm to detain me, but I shrugged him off. I stared into the face that had a slight resemblance to my father and couldn’t believe he had done this to me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Uncle Simon replied, looking from me to the detective. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Mr. Rosenbaum,” Detective Marks announced, prying my hands away from my uncle. “Let us handle the investigation. If you want, you can start to look around.”

Panic flared in my uncle’s eyes and spoke of his guilt. All the pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place. Not only had Gio’s statement pointed to my uncle’s guilt, but the call I’d had from Detective Marks right as I left Gio’s house had confirmed what the motive was. It was a ransom call, requesting four million dollars in cash to return Bryan safely. The call had ended when the detective had asked for evidence that Bryan was still alive.

After relaying the information from Gio to the detective, they had located my uncle and I had met up with the officers. We had been following him around since. We could have pulled him over and questioned him at any time. I wanted to do that so badly, but the detective had warned they had no hard evidence linking Uncle Simon to the abduction. If they acted prematurely they would only be tipping him off that we were on to him. Feeling threatened he might kill Bryan and forget about the ransom.

For the most part he’d had such an ordinary day that I’d even started to think maybe Gio had been lying, and the real culprits were him and his deranged fuck buddy. He’d stopped at a payphone to make a call then waited in his car parked on the road before he drove away. I had thought he would lead us to his house. It was where I would have gone in the first place to see if he was hiding Bryan there. Instead, he stopped at an unfamiliar modest two-story house. The detectives had confirmed this was where his separated wife lived alone, which had puzzled me as to why he was here.

“Mr. Rosenbaum we just have a few questions for you,” Detective Marks stated while waving the other cop along with us inside the house. The cop moved on to start searching the property.

“Hey, you can’t do that!” Uncle Simon argued. “This is private property and I didn’t see a warrant.”

“Are you the owner of this house then?” Detective Marks asked, flipping a small notepad open to scribble in.

“I didn’t say that,” Uncle Simon said. He glared at me, anger simmering through him. “What do you think you are doing? Don’t you have any respect. This is Susan’s home.”

“Then what are you doing here?” I snapped at him. “Does she know you are here?”

“Of course, she knows,” he answered. “We may be separated, but she’s still my wife. I still come around as we try to work on our marriage.”

“Hmm, I think I will just confirm that bit of information,” I stated and retrieved the phone from my pocket.

“Alright then, it was a surprise visit!” he rushed to add. “I was planning to ask her to move back home so we can work on our marriage. Is that hard to believe?”

“Given what I saw at work between you and your secretary, yes I find that hard to believe.”

Color flooded his face and he turned to the detective. “Officer, what is he even doing here? Isn’t he a civilian? Whatever questions you have to ask me can be done without his presence. In fact, why don’t we go to a police station where we can sit and talk about whatever ridiculous notion brought you here.”

“We will go to the police station in a minute to talk to you,” Detective Marks answered. “Still we have to check the property. We are looking for Mr. Rosenbaum’s partner, Mr. Bryan Cummings. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

I couldn’t be the only one who saw the guilt in his eyes. “Why would I know where he is? Why don’t you ask my nephew where he is?”

“We’ve already questioned Mr. Rosenbaum.”

“I still have no idea what all this has to do with me.”

I snapped then. “You can cut the act, Uncle. Someone saw you at mom’s dinner party with that gun you used to shoot at Bryan. I’m thinking the police is interested in that weapon so they can run ballistic tests on the bullet they removed from the walls of the bathroom.”

Cornered, he now looked from me to the detective.

“Now is the time to come clean and tell us all you know,” Detective Marks told him. “We may consider giving you a lighter sentence. We know sometimes people make rash decisions in the moment and it gets out of hand. Let’s not allow it to get any more out of hand. Tell us what you did with Bryan Cummings. I promise you that if you do not participate, we will find Mr. Cummings, and when we do, you’ll be punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

Uncle Simon went silent for a minute before he stared at me. The hatred in his eyes took me by surprise. I had never seen this look on him before. “Then good luck in finding him,” he smirked at me. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all. You should have never been made C.E.O. I was the most senior member of the family. I had been working at the company far longer than you, but he had all the board members singing your praises about what you could do for the company. With all your talk about legacy none of you realized you were robbing me of my legacy! You should have never come back! You should have stayed in the mountains where you belonged. Then maybe you would still have that sorry-excuse-for-a-man!”

My hands balled into fists at my sides. I was barely containing myself and it was because the detective situated himself between us so I couldn’t get to him.

“Where is he, Uncle Simon?” I asked him. “Please,” I added. “Tell me what you did to him. Is he a-alive?”

“How would I know?” he asked with a twisted smile. “Is he?”

“Mr. Rosenbaum, no!” Detective Marks held me away from him before I could reach him or else I would have squeezed the answer out of him. “We’ll get the answers,” he assured me. “We’ll take him down to the station and question him.”

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