Chapter 4 - THE EMERALD'S SECOND SECRET
I slept for three hours and woke convinced I was still in Richard's penthouse. My hand went automatically to the edge of the bed, searching for the phone he used to take from me at night when he said my online reading was making me irrational. When I found it charging beside a glass of water, I remembered where I was. My daughter shifted beneath my ribs. Outside the guest-room window, Lake Michigan looked like a sheet of hammered silver.
I called Nia first. She answered on the second ring and spent a full minute insulting Richard with such creativity that I had to hold the phone away from my ear. Then she demanded the estate address again. She wanted to come over, inspect every exit, and make sure the billionaire wasn't another man who believed offering me a bed entitled him to the rest of my life.
"That's why I love you," I told her.
"You love me because I don't charge for background checks. I'll be there after my shift."
At breakfast, Alexander was already at a long table beside the kitchen, working through documents with Evelyn. He stood when I entered, but he didn't ask whether I had rested well in that careful, controlling tone Richard used when the wrong answer meant an argument. Instead he slid a plate of toast toward an empty place and said the local hospital would happily speak with me if I wanted a follow-up. Rosa poured tea and left me alone to decide whether to sit.
"Your mother knew James Sterling," I said before either of them could talk about the weather.
Alexander set down his pen. "She did. James was one of the contractors who built Crescent House. Later, an internal review uncovered irregular invoices. Your mother took the books away from his company. My family's lawyers helped her secure the original records."
"What happened to them?"
"Some survived. Some disappeared in a storage fire before the civil case concluded. Miriam was due to meet me about missing schedules when she died. I thought a traffic accident was exactly what the police said it was, and I have no evidence proving otherwise. But I never stopped wondering what she planned to show me."
I studied the old photograph again. My mother had told me she repaired antique jewelry and balanced books for small businesses. She had never mentioned a legal dispute involving a billionaire's family or the father of the man I eventually married. Every time I reached for a memory, I found another question tucked beneath it.
"I grew up in foster care after she died," I said. "If she left money or documents, why did nobody find me?"
Evelyn looked troubled. "There was a sealed file naming a lawyer who retired unexpectedly. We can search for correspondence, but I won't pretend the system always worked as it should."
I wanted someone to blame immediately, because blame had a shape and could be carried. Uncertainty filled entire rooms. Instead I asked Rosa whether she had a magnifying glass. She produced a small brass one from a drawer as if eccentric breakfast requests were an ordinary feature of the house. I enlarged the photograph of my mother's necklace with the phone camera and saw a tiny notch along the gold leaf setting.
"She made me help polish it every year," I said. "There was writing inside, under the hinge. Richard didn't know because he thought it was an ordinary heirloom. It opens with a jeweler's pin."
"What did the writing say?" Alexander asked.
"Only a number. I thought it was a repair mark." I closed my eyes, imagining my mother's hands at our scratched kitchen table. She had held the necklace beneath the yellow light while teaching me how to thread a fine chain through a clasp. "Zero seven, fourteen," I remembered. "And a little moon."
Evelyn looked sharply at Alexander. "July fourteenth."
"The original Crescent House deed was executed that day," he replied. "It may just commemorate the project."
I heard the caution in his voice and appreciated it. Every possibility was not a revelation. The necklace might contain nothing more exciting than a sentimental engraving, yet Vanessa wearing it made the theft painfully public and gave us a traceable piece of my mother's estate. Evelyn arranged for an independent appraiser to review old photographs and any insurance records she could locate. I asked that nobody contact Vanessa without involving me. I would not let a team of strangers fight over my mother's memory while I waited in a comfortable bedroom.
That afternoon Nia arrived carrying groceries, two blankets, and a battered green metal box. "Your emergency apocalypse kit," she announced. Inside were spare ID copies, postcards from my mother that I'd left at her apartment when Richard began complaining about clutter, and the notebook I used at community college. At the bottom lay a thin envelope I hadn't opened in years. It had been mailed to my foster home the month after I turned eighteen, with my name written in a graceful hand.
The letter inside was from a woman named Rebecca Hall. She said she had been Miriam Hale's colleague and had something that belonged to me. She included a street address and asked that I visit whenever I felt ready. I remembered seeing the letter while Richard was arranging our engagement trip. He had called it one more person trying to claim my mother's nonexistent fortune. I had put it away because I wanted to believe the man promising me a new family.
"Did you ever call her?" Nia asked.
"No."
"Then let's find out whether she's still there."
The address led to a tiny accounting office in a renovated Chicago warehouse. Rebecca answered on the third ring. When I introduced myself, silence followed. I thought the call had dropped until she said, "Oh, Clara. I've been waiting so long that I stopped leaving the office early on Thursdays in case you finally came."
I arranged to visit the next morning with Nia. Alexander offered transportation; I asked for a regular car rather than an armed procession. He agreed, though his expression told me the discovery of a missing document did not make him any less concerned about Richard. Before we left the breakfast room, Evelyn received a message from her investigator. Vanessa had been photographed at a charitable fundraising reception two nights earlier, wearing my mother's necklace. The organizer was a company called Palisade Civic Partners.
May you like
Alexander looked at the screen, and his eyes went still. Palisade, he explained, was an advisory firm managing certain Vanguard investments. Its managing partner, Graham Shaw, had been Alexander's closest business adviser for twelve years. On the reception guest list, directly below Graham's name, stood another name I would have recognized anywhere.
Richard Sterling.
