Chapter 6 - The Girl in the Red Hat

Mrs. Alvarez described a child around nine wearing a red knit hat. She had waited near the van while Derek carried boxes. A thin woman sat in the passenger seat, her face hidden behind dark glasses.

Natalie shook her head. "Derek doesn't have a daughter."

"You don't know that," Ryan said.

"I know him."

"Apparently you've been knowing a lot of people I haven't."

Deputy Torres arrived and took statements in the driveway. No one forced the door. Mara had advised Evelyn not to grant entry until the documents could be inventoried and the lawful occupants' rights reviewed. Ryan, officially a guest rather than a tenant, began to understand how much he had assumed.

Torres asked Natalie how Derek got into the basement.

"I gave him the old garage code," she admitted. "He said he needed to photograph the furnace for the listing."

"Why was a finance contact photographing a furnace?" Torres asked.

Natalie stared at the crushed snow under her boots. "I didn't ask."

At Mara's office, Evelyn opened an envelope Paul had sealed shortly before his death. It contained a copy of his handwritten ledger and a letter addressed to Ryan.

"I kept the original out of the house," she said. "Paul made me promise not to use it as a weapon."

"We're not using it as a weapon," Mara said. "We're establishing what belongs to whom."

Evelyn began reading the letter aloud. Paul wrote that he had invested every bonus from twenty years of electrical work into the land and building. He had also quietly paid off a loan Ryan took when his first business failed. But the letter wasn't about money. It asked his son to protect his mother from people who saw her kindness as a contract they could rewrite.

Evelyn stopped. Her eyes filled.

Mara placed a tissue beside the paper and gave her time.

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When Evelyn's phone buzzed, it was a picture from an unknown number: the small girl in the red hat, standing beside a kitchen table. On the table lay Paul's missing notebooks.

Below the picture was a message: Tell your lawyer to stop asking questions, or she loses the only copy.