Chapter 5 - The Daughter Declared Dead
Edmund did not deny signing the death certificate.
He asked to meet at the foundation’s legal office with Detective Chen present. Lucia agreed only because every lie now seemed to point back to him.
The office occupied the top floor of an old library. Portraits of past chairmen lined the hall, all solemn men painted beside books they probably never opened. Edmund stood beneath his own portrait when Lucia entered.
“I was not a doctor,” he said. “I certified the transfer of remains based on medical records.”
“Whose remains?” Lucia asked.
“No remains were released.”
“Then why declare a baby dead?”
“Because Richard asked me to protect Victoria from a scandal.”
Victoria flinched. “What scandal?”
Edmund looked at her with something like pity.
“Your child was born alive. Richard had already arranged Scarlett’s adoption. He believed another infant would complicate the inheritance structure. The hospital director told him your daughter had severe neurological damage and would never survive independently.”
Lucia’s hands curled.
“And he sent her to Saint Orison.”
“Yes.”
“You helped him.”
“I signed documents I did not understand.”
“You were an attorney.”
“I understood the law. I did not understand the program.”
Lucia laughed bitterly. “That is what powerful men always say when the law finally looks back at them.”
Detective Chen asked for every file Edmund possessed. He opened a safe and produced a sealed packet. Inside were copies of neonatal records, correspondence from Richard, and a photograph of an infant with a crescent-shaped mark beneath her left shoulder.
Lucia had the same mark.
Victoria began crying silently.
The records were incomplete but sufficient for a court-ordered DNA test. Results could take days. Lucia refused to let possibility become comfort.
“Biology does not erase what you did,” she told Victoria.
“I know.”
“And it does not make you my mother.”
“I know.”
Edmund handed Lucia one final letter written by Elena.
It was dated the night of the fire at Saint Orison.
Edmund,
You once said guilt is useful only when it becomes action. Prove it. If I fail, keep Lucia away from the Whitmores until she is old enough to choose truth over belonging. Do not tell Victoria unless the maternal record is confirmed. Richard altered too many files. There is another woman claiming the child, and one of them is lying.
Lucia read the last sentence again.
“Another woman?”
Edmund nodded. “A nurse named Miriam Cross claimed you were her daughter. She disappeared before we could verify it.”
Detective Chen searched the name. Miriam Cross had resurfaced five years earlier as the director of a private youth residence in another state. The residence closed after allegations of forged adoptions. Miriam vanished again.
Pike entered with news from the financial investigation. Whitmore Civic Holdings had moved forty-two million dollars through seven charities. Scarlett signed thirteen transfers, but many occurred before she became a director.
“She may be involved,” Pike said, “but she did not design the system.”
“Where is she?” Lucia asked.
“Her vehicle was found near the river.”
Empty.
Inside the trunk, police found a bloodstained scarf belonging to Scarlett and a note addressed to Victoria.
Mother, you chose her twice.
Victoria went pale.
Lucia understood the accusation. First Victoria had lost Lucia and raised Scarlett. Then, by allowing the ceremony document to be read, she had chosen Lucia’s truth over Scarlett’s protection.
But the blood bothered Chen. There was too little for a serious injury and too much to be accidental.
“A staged disappearance,” Mateo said when Lucia told him later.
They sat in the Grand Meridian’s empty staff cafeteria. The hotel had suspended him during the investigation, yet he returned to collect his things.
“You are leaving?” Lucia asked.
“My locker was searched last night. Whoever did it left this.”
He placed a silver cufflink on the table. It bore the broken-wing swan.
Lucia remembered seeing the same cufflinks on Edmund at foundation events.
Mateo turned it over. Scratched into the back were the numbers 11-09-26.
A date three months in the future.
“What happens then?” he asked.
Lucia looked at the foundation calendar on her phone.
November ninth was the annual Children’s Trust vote, when the board elected its chairman and approved sealed grants.
Edmund planned to retire that night.
Or someone planned to replace him.
Lucia’s phone rang from a blocked number.
When she answered, Scarlett whispered, “They are going to kill my mother, and you are helping them.”
Then the line went dead.
The call lasted twenty-three seconds, but technicians recovered a faint repeating sound behind Scarlett’s voice. Mateo identified it as the warning bell used at old river locks. Only three remained operational. Police searched all three and found nothing except a crimson high heel placed upright on the concrete at Lock Nine.
May you like
Inside the shoe was a strip torn from page forty-seven. It contained one additional phrase: Subject V-6 retained by unanimous consent.
Not one person had decided Lucia’s fate. A room full of respected adults had voted, recorded the vote, and gone home. That discovery changed Lucia’s anger. She no longer wanted only Richard or Edmund exposed. She wanted every chair at the table named.
