Chapter 7 - The Lawyer’s Last Appointment
Daniel Price’s death became a separate investigation. Police asked Ethan and Mara not to contact anyone associated with the motel while evidence was collected.
Ethan wanted answers immediately.
Mara wanted them too, but she remembered the danger that came from acting before thinking.
“We’re not giving Vanessa another chance to call us unstable,” she said.
Ethan nodded.
They spent the next day at a temporary apartment arranged through Mara’s attorney. June brought cinnamon rolls. Ruth brought copies of the foundation’s annual reports. Ben arrived with a cardboard box of Evelyn’s Christmas ornaments salvaged from the mansion.
Mara lifted a wooden cardinal.
“Mom made these?”
“She painted them every year,” Ben said.
Ethan remembered the kitchen table covered in red paint. For a moment, he could almost hear Evelyn laughing at the crooked beaks.
Then Ruth found something in the reports.
The foundation had funded a shelter called Winter Harbor House for twenty-six years. The payments stopped six months after Evelyn died, but public fundraising brochures continued claiming the shelter was supported.
“Where did the donations go?” Mara asked.
“To North Harbor,” Ruth answered.
The shelter’s former director, Mrs. Agnes Bell, agreed to meet them. She was eighty, sharp-eyed, and furious.
“We closed because the checks stopped,” she said. “Forty women and children had to find somewhere else to sleep.”
Ethan stared at the old photograph on her desk.
Evelyn stood in the shelter kitchen, wearing an apron and serving Christmas dinner.
“She never told me she worked here.”
“She came every Thursday.”
Mara looked at the photograph.
“Was I ever here?”
Agnes studied her face.
“Once. Your mother brought you when you were twelve.”
Mara remembered a woman handing her a paper star and telling her that no child should have to earn a warm meal.
She had never known that woman was her mother.
Agnes opened a filing cabinet and produced the shelter’s original charter. Evelyn had created a reserve fund that could only be used for housing families in crisis.
“Charles said it was dissolved,” Agnes explained. “But the money never came here.”
Ruth examined the account number.
“That reserve is still active.”
“How much?” Ethan asked.
“Nearly eighteen million dollars.”
The room went silent.
Mara looked at Agnes.
“That money belongs to the shelter.”
Agnes nodded.
“Then help us get it back.”
Ethan instructed the attorneys to pursue recovery through the courts. He also publicly disclosed the suspicious transfers and recused himself from decisions involving his father.
The news spread quickly.
Vanessa appeared on television that evening, claiming Mara had manipulated Ethan with a fabricated family history. She described herself as the victim of a coordinated attack.
Mara watched for thirty seconds, then switched off the television.
“I’m not letting her define me again.”
Ethan smiled.
“Good.”
At nine, Ben called.
He had found something in the mansion’s garage: a locked metal toolbox belonging to Evelyn. Charles had ordered it thrown away after the funeral, but Ben kept it because Evelyn once asked him to protect it.
Inside were old photographs, a diary, and a repair invoice dated the day before her death.
The invoice listed brake work on Evelyn’s car.
The mechanic’s signature belonged to Gregory Voss.
Vanessa’s brother.
Mara looked at Ethan.
“Was Gregory a mechanic?”
“No.”
“Then why did he sign it?”
The answer arrived the next morning.
May you like
Gregory Voss had vanished.
And his company’s security camera had recorded Vanessa entering his office at 2:14 a.m. carrying a red suitcase.
