Chapter 9 - The Name Beneath the Stone
Charlotte refused to let the claim distract her. Whether Brandon was her father’s son, Victor Dane’s son or neither did not change what he had done to Skylar.
But it changed the likely purpose of the forged documents. If Brandon could prove he was Thomas’s child, he might claim a beneficial interest in the trust. Dane could use that claim to keep the house trapped in litigation for years.
Naomi obtained Thomas’s sealed probate file. It contained a statement acknowledging that Gertrude had once claimed Thomas fathered Brandon, followed by a private DNA report excluding him.
The report looked authentic. Elias examined the paper and found the laboratory letterhead had been printed on equipment manufactured five years after the stated date.
“Another forgery,” Charlotte said.
“Or a later copy,” Naomi cautioned. “We need the laboratory record.”
The laboratory had closed. Its files were held by a medical storage company scheduled to destroy records at the end of the month.
Meanwhile, Samuel Cross regained consciousness. Detective Chen allowed Charlotte a brief hospital visit.
Cross was seventy-nine, thin and bruised, with a voice like dry leaves. “You have Thomas’s eyes,” he said.
“Who attacked you?”
“A man from Dane. I never saw his face.”
“Where is the ledger?”
Cross smiled faintly. “Thomas never trusted paper. The ledger is a name we used for the complete evidence set.”
“Where?”
“A house has four directions, but a family has five.”
Charlotte waited.
“Past, present, blood, choice and truth,” Cross said. “Thomas hid one key in each.”
He told her the compass rose concealed the first key. The second was inside a clock Thomas had given Charlotte. The third concerned Brandon’s blood. The fourth belonged to the child Thomas chose as heir. The fifth would appear only when the first four were combined.
“Why make it so difficult?”
“Because Dane could steal objects. He could not easily steal relationships.”
That night, under police supervision, a conservator removed paneling from the old entrance. Behind it was the carved compass rose. At its center, they found a brass disk etched with numbers.
Charlotte recognized them as coordinates. They pointed to Mercer Bridge, the site of the old collapse.
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Before they could leave, Detective Chen received an alert. Victor Dane had filed a petition claiming an ownership interest in Mercer House on behalf of an undisclosed heir.
The attached DNA report named Brandon Vale as Thomas Mercer’s biological son.
