Chapter 7 - THE KEY TO THE WEST TOWER
The key belonged to a room in Valecrest’s west tower.
Evelyn recognized the number engraved along its edge: W-6.
The west tower had been sealed after Charles Vale’s death. Helena claimed the structure needed renovation, but no workers had entered it in seven years.
The blood on the key was old.
A private laboratory confirmed it belonged to a woman related to the Mercer family. The sample was too degraded to establish whether it came from Anna herself.
Evelyn returned to Valecrest the next evening with Adrian, Julian, Jonah, and Celeste.
Celeste arrived wearing no jewelry and carrying no phone.
“Helena’s staff searched my apartment,” she said. “They removed my computers.”
“Why would Helena turn against you?” Evelyn asked.
“Because I warned you.”
“Or because she wants us to believe you did.”
Celeste accepted the suspicion without protest.
Jonah unlocked the west tower’s iron gate.
Dust covered the spiral stairs. At the top, room W-6 stood behind a heavy oak door.
The bloodstained key opened it.
Inside was a small sitting room with covered furniture and a view of the river. On the wall hung dozens of photographs taken inside Valecrest over three decades.
Trustees entering Charles’s study.
Helena exchanging envelopes with a judge.
Celeste speaking to a foundation auditor.
Julian standing beside the burned car in the garage.
Adrian meeting Charles Vale at a restaurant twelve years earlier.
Evelyn removed the final photograph from the wall.
“You knew my father.”
Adrian did not deny it.
“I was a law student. He offered me an internship.”
“You told me you met him once at a fundraiser.”
“That was the first time you saw us together.”
“How many times did you meet?”
“Four.”
“Why did you lie?”
“Because your father asked me never to tell you.”
Julian stepped forward. “Why would he ask that?”
Adrian looked at the photographs.
“He wanted an attorney outside the family network. Someone Helena could not influence. He gave me copies of financial records and told me to release them if he died.”
“Did you?” Evelyn demanded.
“No.”
“Why?”
“The files disappeared from my apartment the night of the crash. The only person who knew I had them was Charles.”
Celeste laughed bitterly.
“And you still expect us to trust you?”
Adrian faced her.
“You submitted the catering documents for a dead woman.”
“Someone used my credentials.”
“And someone photographed me inside this room before I ever became Evelyn’s attorney.”
Evelyn studied the photograph.
Adrian looked younger, almost unrecognizable, but the date was printed clearly in the corner.
Two days before Charles Vale died.
“What did my father tell you during the last meeting?” she asked.
Adrian’s voice became quiet.
“He said the foundation theft was connected to your mother’s death.”
Evelyn went still.
Her mother, Katherine Vale, had died from an illness when Evelyn was eight. No one had ever questioned it.
“What connection?”
“He believed Katherine discovered the transfers first.”
Julian shook his head.
“Mother was never involved in the foundation.”
“She was a trustee,” Adrian said. “Her name was removed from public records after she died.”
Evelyn turned toward Julian.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
On a table beneath the photographs sat an old projector.
Jonah connected it to a power unit.
A film appeared on the blank wall.
Katherine Vale stood inside the west tower, thinner than Evelyn remembered but unmistakably alive in the image.
She spoke directly to the camera.
“If Charles has found this recording, then the symptoms have begun again.”
Evelyn gripped the edge of a chair.
Her mother continued.
“The doctors believe I am ill. They are wrong. Someone has been adding something to my medication.”
The film skipped.
Katherine held up a folder marked VALE FOUNDATION INTERNAL ACCOUNTS.
“I found transfers authorized by Helena’s signature, but the money does not stop with her. It moves through an account identified only as Beneficiary Nine.”
Celeste glanced toward the locked door.
“What is Beneficiary Nine?”
No one answered.
Katherine looked over her shoulder in the recording.
A sound came from outside the room.
“If anything happens to me, the proof is hidden where Evelyn fell.”
The recording ended.
The tower lights shut off.
A phone rang somewhere beneath the covered furniture.
Jonah found it taped to the underside of a chair.
When he answered, Helena Vale’s voice filled the room.
“Evelyn, your mother was delusional near the end.”
“You knew she made this recording?”
“I knew Charles encouraged her fears.”
“Did you alter her medicine?”
Helena exhaled slowly.
“I am trying to save you from repeating their mistakes.”
“What mistakes?”
“Believing the staircase witness was there to protect you.”
The line went silent.
May you like
Then Helena added:
“Anna Mercer did not witness your fall. She caused it.”
