Chapter 3 - the dead man’s unfinished gift
No one spoke for several seconds.
Outside the office, the last dinner guests hurried toward the driveway. Tires rolled over gravel. Doors closed. The beautiful evening Vanessa had arranged was dissolving into whispers and hurried departures.
Margaret shut the office door.
“Who hired you?” she asked.
Vanessa looked toward Ethan.
“You need to hear this from someone else.”
“Who?” Ethan demanded.
Vanessa did not answer.
Margaret placed her handbag on the desk.
“You have used more than three hundred thousand dollars from accounts connected to my name. You participated in an eight-point-six-million-dollar property transaction supported by forged documents. This is not the moment for games.”
“I never touched your signature.”
“Then give me the name of the person who did.”
Vanessa laughed softly, but there was no humor in it.
“You still think you’re controlling the room.”
Margaret took one step closer.
“I am giving you an opportunity to speak before investigators start asking the same questions.”
Vanessa’s eyes hardened.
“You don’t understand what Silver Briar is.”
“It is a property purchased through fraud.”
“It is proof.”
“Of what?”
“That Thomas Hale did not trust you.”
Ethan looked at his mother.
Margaret’s face remained still, but the words had landed.
Vanessa continued.
“Thomas created a plan before he died. He knew you would control Ethan’s future. He knew you would use Hale Meridian to keep him dependent on you.”
“My father died in a boating accident,” Ethan said. “There was no secret plan.”
Vanessa reached into her dress pocket and removed a small brass key.
She placed it on the desk.
A metal tag attached to it carried two engraved letters.
T.H.
Ethan stared at the initials.
Margaret did not touch the key.
“Where did you get that?”
“It was delivered to me eight months ago.”
“By whom?”
Vanessa looked toward the dark window.
“Someone who said he was protecting Ethan’s inheritance.”
Margaret felt a cold pressure settle in her chest.
“Describe him.”
“I never saw his face.”
“You just said he knew Thomas.”
“He sent documents. Photographs. Copies of letters Thomas wrote before his death.”
“Copies can be manufactured.”
“What about recordings?”
Ethan looked at her sharply.
“What recordings?”
Vanessa opened her handbag and searched inside.
Her expression changed.
She searched again, faster.
“It was here.”
“What was?” Margaret asked.
“A flash drive.”
“The one taken from the docking station?”
Vanessa looked toward the door.
“The woman in the black coat.”
Margaret’s phone vibrated with an email from Daniel. She opened the attached loan application.
Her forged signature appeared at the bottom of every document.
The imitation was excellent.
Even Margaret might have accepted it at first glance.
But she noticed one detail.
The final stroke of the letter H curved inward.
Margaret had not signed her name that way in twelve years.
Thomas had.
After his death, she had deliberately changed the stroke because seeing his influence in her handwriting had become unbearable.
She enlarged the signature.
“Ethan.”
He came closer.
“This was not copied from any recent document,” Margaret said. “Whoever created it used an old signature.”
“How old?”
“More than eleven years.”
Vanessa looked almost satisfied.
“Now do you believe me?”
“No,” Margaret replied. “I believe someone wants us to believe Thomas is connected.”
Daniel called again.
Margaret answered privately this time.
“We identified one of the shell companies,” he said. “It was incorporated by a law office that closed ten years ago.”
“Who owned the office?”
“An attorney named Rebecca Voss.”
Margaret gripped the phone.
The surname took her back to a conference room seventeen years earlier, when Hale Meridian’s chief financial officer had sat across from her and denied stealing company money.
Martin Voss had been intelligent, patient, and trusted by Thomas.
He had also transferred millions through false vendor accounts.
Margaret had discovered the theft and forced him out. Before prosecutors could charge him, Martin disappeared.
His wife, Rebecca, claimed she did not know where he had gone.
Six months later, Thomas died.
“Margaret?” Daniel asked.
“I’m here.”
“Did you know Rebecca Voss?”
“Yes.”
“There’s more. The Nevada company involved in Silver Briar was formed by her daughter.”
“Her daughter?”
“Lydia Voss.”
Margaret looked toward the open doorway.
The woman in the black coat had been described as around fifty with short hair.
Rebecca Voss would now be sixty-four.
Lydia would be forty-two.
“What does Lydia look like?” Margaret asked.
Daniel sent a photograph.
Margaret opened it.
The woman in the black coat had not been staff.
She was Lydia Voss.
And she had just driven away with the recordings Vanessa claimed belonged to Thomas.
Margaret showed the photograph to the valet attendant.
“That’s her,” he said immediately.
Ethan took the phone from Margaret.
“Who is she?”
“Her father stole from Hale Meridian.”
“And you think she is behind Silver Briar?”
“I think she was here to remove evidence.”
Vanessa stepped toward them.
“She wasn’t supposed to come tonight.”
Margaret turned sharply.
“So you do know her.”
“I know her voice.”
“What does that mean?”
“She was the person who called me.”
Ethan’s face twisted with disbelief.
“You said you didn’t know who hired you.”
“I said I never saw the person’s face.”
“You knew her name.”
“No. She called herself Helen.”
Margaret’s breath caught.
Helen was the name of Margaret’s older sister.
A woman who had died before Ethan was born.
Margaret stared at Vanessa.
“Exactly what did she tell you?”
Vanessa swallowed.
“She said Helen Hale was the only person who knew what really happened to Thomas.”
Margaret’s phone vibrated again.
This time it was a security alert from her private home in Pacific Palisades.
Motion detected in the upstairs study.
Margaret opened the live camera feed.
A figure in a black coat stood inside the room where she kept Thomas’s personal papers.
May you like
Lydia Voss had reached Margaret’s house before them.
And she was opening the safe.
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