Chapter 6 - THE MAN WHO KNEW MY FATHER'S SECRETChristopher met me before sunrise.
He looked exhausted.
“I need you to sit down.”
“I hate when you say that.”
“This is bigger than Dwight.”
I sat.
He opened a file.
“The trust amendment was notarized one day after your father's funeral.”
“By whom?”
“A private notary.”
“Who?”
Christopher slid over a name.
Evelyn Carter.
I recognized it.
“My father's old accountant.”
Christopher nodded.
“She disappeared after your father's death.”
“Disappeared?”
“Moved to Florida. Changed her phone. Closed her business.”
“What does she know?”
“We're trying to find out.”
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
A woman's voice spoke.
“Elizabeth?”
“Yes.”
“This is Evelyn.”
I stood so quickly my chair fell backward.
“Where are you?”
“I can't tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because they found me once already.”
“Who?”
She breathed heavily.
“Jared.”
My heart pounded.
“What did you sign?”
“The trust amendment.”
“How could you notarize a document after my father died?”
Silence.
Then she whispered:
“Because the document wasn't signed after his death.”
I frowned.
“What are you saying?”
“It was signed before.”
“Then why is the date wrong?”
“Because your father ordered me to change the date.”
I couldn't speak.
“Why?”
“Because he knew he was going to die.”
The sentence hit me like a hammer.
My father had known.
Maybe not exactly when.
But he had expected it.
Evelyn continued.
“He told me Jared would come after you.”
“What did he ask you to do?”
“Hide the amendment.”
“Where?”
She hesitated.
“Your wedding.”
I froze.
“What?”
“The amendment was hidden in something that would be given to you on your wedding day.”
I suddenly remembered the envelope Susan had given me.
The five twenty-dollar bills.
I had thrown them into my suitcase.
I searched the room.
Found the envelope.
Inside was something hard.
A tiny metal key.
My breath caught.
Evelyn whispered:
“The key opens the second box.”
“What second box?”
“The one Dwight doesn't know about.”
The call ended.
I stared at the key.
Christopher examined it.
“There is an engraving.”
I looked closer.
Three letters.
E.C.
Evelyn Carter.
My father had trusted her.
And somehow she had hidden something inside the wedding arrangement.
That meant Susan's envelope hadn't been random.
Maybe she had been ordered to give it to me without knowing what it contained.
We traced the engraving.
It corresponded to a storage facility outside the city.
We drove there with an investigator.
Unit 118.
The lock opened.
Inside was a single wooden trunk.
Nothing else.
My hands shook as I opened it.
Photographs.
Letters.
A notebook.
And a video recorder.
Christopher activated it.
My father's face appeared.
Older.
Tired.
Alive.
I almost collapsed.
“Elizabeth, if you're watching this, you have reached the truth.”
He looked directly into the camera.
“I need you to understand something.”
He paused.
“I was not killed because of my money.”
Christopher and I stared at the screen.
My father's next sentence changed everything.
“I was killed because I found out who was laundering money through the company.”
The footage stopped.
The screen went black.
Then the device automatically played another clip.
This one was recorded much later.
My father appeared again.
But this time he was sitting beside someone.
A man.
I knew him.
I had seen him at my wedding.
I had seen him at the courthouse.
I had seen him standing beside Jared.
It was the family attorney.
Except my father called him by another name.
“Daniel.”
My blood ran cold.
Daniel looked directly into the camera.
And said:
“Jared is not your greatest danger.”
Then the screen went black.
Christopher slowly turned toward me.
“Elizabeth.”
“What?”
“The attorney representing Jared's family…”
He swallowed.
“His name isn't Daniel.”
I looked back at the frozen screen.
May you like
Then the storage-unit lights suddenly went out.
And from outside, we heard the sound of someone locking the door.
