Chapter 5 - Three Days After Death

I knelt among crushed flower petals and collected the pages. The date was unmistakable. My mother had supposedly signed a confession while she was lying in the county morgue. Either someone had forged her name, or the record of her death was wrong.

“Where did you get this?” I asked Vanessa.

“From someone who knows what your family is.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you should stop digging.”

Daniel called his father, Arthur Mercer, on speakerphone. Arthur answered over the sound of applause from another room. “Son, I hear we have a little problem.”

“A woman named Mara Parker,” Daniel said. “Tell me what happened.”

There was a pause just long enough to be an answer. “You don't know what you're stepping into.”

“Try me.”

“Bring your grandmother to my office. Don't bring the waitress.”

I almost laughed. Even now I was just the waitress.

Eleanor leaned toward the phone. “Arthur, you're speaking about a woman whose name you put on memorial plaques while refusing to meet her children. Don't you dare pretend this is about keeping the peace.”

Arthur's voice hardened. “Mother, you promised.”

“I promised to protect this family. I never promised to protect its lies.”

The line went dead.

Marcus found me a dry hotel sweater, and I called my brother, Noah. He answered after the fifth ring, sounding breathless.

“Em? There's a man outside our building. He's been sitting in a dark SUV for an hour.”

“Don't go outside. Go to Mrs. Alvarez on the second floor.”

“That's where I am. He asked the doorman whether you were home.”

Daniel heard. “I'll send security.”

“No,” I said. “You don't get to decide who protects him. Call the police.”

He accepted the correction immediately. We reported the suspicious vehicle and gave Noah instructions to stay with the neighbor.

Then Eleanor drew me aside. “Mara came to see me two days before the crash. She said the accounts weren't the most dangerous thing she'd uncovered.”

“What was?”

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Eleanor's hands began to shake. “A missing child. A birth record. Something Richard Whitmore would have destroyed his whole empire to conceal.”

Before I could ask another question, my phone lit up with a text from an unknown number: IF YOU WANT YOUR BROTHER SAFE, BRING THE KEY TO THE OLD MERCER BOATHOUSE. COME ALONE.