Chapter 5 - Under the Desk
I was out of the hotel before the detective finished telling me not to leave.
Samuel drove because my hands were shaking too hard to trust on the wheel.
Claire sat in the back with Noah pressed against her side. Martin followed with two detectives and a patrol unit behind him.
"Dad, slow down," Claire said when I reached for the dashboard as Samuel cut through traffic.
"I am not driving."
"I know."
That shut me up.
We reached the estate in nineteen minutes.
The front door stood open.
Tom, my estate manager, waited outside with blood on one knuckle.
"What happened?"
"I tried to stop him at the west stairs. Hood, gloves, medium build. He shoved me into the railing and ran through the kitchen."
A detective took over.
I went straight to my office.
Drawers hung open. Papers covered the floor. One framed photograph of Margaret lay face-down beneath the desk.
The wall panel beside the fireplace was open.
My safe door hung wide.
"What was in there?" Claire asked.
I crossed the room.
Cash untouched.
Two watches untouched.
A folder containing property deeds still sat on the middle shelf.
The upper shelf was empty.
"Your mother's journals."
Claire looked at me.
"Which ones?"
"The last six months before the accident. And some old cassette recordings."
Martin stepped inside.
"Anything else missing?"
"No."
A detective examined the safe lock.
"No forced entry."
Tom rubbed his injured hand.
"The house alarm was disabled with an authorized code."
"Mine?"
"No. One of the legacy family codes."
Claire crouched near the desk.
"Who has those?"
"You. Me. Samuel. Tom. Margaret had one."
Samuel stood in the doorway.
"Margaret's should have been removed years ago."
Tom frowned.
"It was never deleted. Mr. Whitmore couldn't bring himself to do it."
Samuel looked at me.
"I didn't know that."
A detective began dusting the safe.
Samuel stepped over the scattered papers.
"Margaret hated technology. If she suspected something, she probably wrote it down."
I turned toward him.
"I said journals."
"What?"
"You said she wrote it down."
"You just told us journals were missing."
Had I?
I replayed the last minute in my head.
Claire broke the tension.
"Dad."
She was kneeling under my desk.
"What are you doing?"
"There's tape here."
She reached up and peeled a small black recorder from the underside of the desktop.
I had never seen it.
Martin put out a hand.
"Don't touch the controls until police photograph it."
A detective did exactly that, then bagged it, photographed the bag, and pressed play through the clear plastic.
Static.
A click.
Then Margaret's voice.
I grabbed the back of my chair.
Four years vanished in a second.
"Richard, if you find this, it means I ran out of time."
Claire covered her mouth.
Noah looked up at her.
"Grandma?"
The recording crackled.
Margaret continued.
"I was wrong about the accounting problem. It is not an accounting problem. Someone close to you has been building access for years. I confronted him once and he smiled at me like I had asked about the weather."
My heart hammered against my ribs.
"Who?" I whispered.
Margaret's voice dropped lower.
May you like
"Richard, if something happens to me, Samuel knows why."
