Chapter 5 - The Woman in the Green Shoes
The morning after Christmas Eve, Gabriel drove to a modest brick duplex forty minutes from the mansion. Nora had traced the anonymous message to a prepaid phone purchased near the former Harbor House property. The woman who opened the duplex door was in her seventies, with white hair pinned neatly behind her ears and a green velvet slipper on one foot.
"Margaret Voss?" Gabriel asked.
"If Evelyn sent you, tell her I'm tired of being frightened."
"My name is Gabriel Mercer."
Margaret held the doorframe. "Walter's boy."
Inside, the room smelled of cinnamon and old paper. A small artificial tree stood beside a television. Margaret offered coffee, then seemed to forget she'd offered it.
"My father died in April," Gabriel said. "Someone told me it wasn't his heart."
"His heart failed. That part is true. What happened before it failed is what matters."
She produced a folder of photocopied ledgers. Thirty-seven years earlier, Evelyn had used the family business to move money into accounts that financed an apartment, medical bills, and eventually the education of a child whose identity had been concealed. Margaret discovered the transfers and confronted Walter. He had insisted on protecting the child but wanted the records preserved.
"Who was the child?" Gabriel asked.
Margaret's eyes filled. "Mine."
He looked again at the photograph from the workshop. "The toddler?"
"My daughter, Leah. Walter wasn't her father. Your uncle Thomas was. He promised to marry me, then married into another family instead. Evelyn used company money to keep me quiet because the truth threatened the merger that made Mercer Furniture wealthy."
Gabriel exhaled. "So Dad paid you?"
"He paid for Leah's schooling after he learned what they'd done. From his own pocket. The hidden accounts were Evelyn's. Walter spent years trying to separate them."
"Why didn't he tell me?"
"He thought he could finish it before involving you. Men of his generation sometimes called secrecy protection."
Margaret slid a hospital visitor log across the table. Evelyn and Daniel had visited Walter the afternoon before his death. Walter had been recovering from a minor procedure, and Dr. Bell's former colleague had noted an argument in the room. No medical finding in the documents established wrongdoing, but the visitor log contradicted Evelyn's claim that she'd been out of town.
"I don't know what happened to him," Margaret said. "I know he called me that morning and said he was ready to expose the accounts. By evening he was gone."
Gabriel photographed the documents. "Did you write on the back of Rosie's sign?"
"No. I haven't been near your house."
"Someone told me to ask about the attic."
Margaret went still. "Then Walter's other papers are still there."
She explained that Walter had built a concealed storage space behind the attic's old cedar closet. The entrance was disguised as a panel in the wall. He had told her about it in case his lawyer couldn't reach him.
"Who else knew?"
"Your mother. And possibly your brother."
Gabriel returned to find two police cars outside the mansion. Celeste had reported that he'd threatened Daniel at Christmas dinner. An officer listened to both accounts, spoke separately to June and Mrs. Alvarez, and noted that no one alleged an injury. Gabriel gave the officer the sign and explained what had happened to Rosie. The officer documented the concern and explained how to make a child-protection report. Gabriel had already begun that process with Dr. Bell's help.
Evelyn watched from the staircase. "You brought strangers into my home."
"You made it unsafe for my daughter."
"You have no idea what your father did to keep this family together."
"Then tell me."
She turned away.
In the attic, Gabriel found the cedar closet, but the panel had already been opened. Dust outlined the place where a metal document case had stood. Someone had removed it recently, leaving a clean rectangle on the floor.
A red thread caught on a nail. He recognized the fabric: Celeste's Christmas coat.
Then his phone rang. It was Nora.
"I found Leah Voss," she said. "She's been working under a different surname for twenty years. Gabriel, she's the auditor your father hired to review the company before he died."
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"Where is she?"
"At the mansion," Nora said. "She just signed in as a Christmas guest."
