Chapter 8 - The Safe
Jack called the county sheriff from his own phone.
Not the Vale family’s attorney. Not their private fixer. The sheriff.
He gave the dispatcher the address and asked for a welfare check on Rebecca Lane using the number Claire had called. Then he requested a patrol unit at the mansion to document what had happened.
Ethan laughed bitterly. “You’re turning a family argument into a circus.”
Claire looked at him. “You turned our marriage into one.”
That shut him up.
Charles asked Jack to return to the study.
“There is a wall safe,” he said. “Behind the painting of my father.”
Margaret stepped forward. “There is nothing in that safe that concerns the Mercers.”
Charles looked at her for a long time.
“You don’t get to decide that anymore.”
In the study, Jack moved the oil portrait aside. The safe was old, mechanical, and untouched by the new electronic system.
Charles gave him six numbers.
The lock opened.
Inside were passports, jewelry boxes, property deeds, and a thick red folder.
Claire pulled it out.
Across the front, in black marker, someone had written MERCER.
Jack felt the back of his neck go cold.
Inside were copies of Claire’s driver’s license, Social Security card, tax forms, and old signatures cut from Christmas letters and thank-you notes.
There were also practice sheets.
Pages and pages of her name written by someone else.
Claire sat down hard in the desk chair.
Ethan stood in the doorway under Luis’s watch.
“That’s not mine,” he said.
Jack held up a forged signature.
“It came from your father’s safe.”
“I didn’t put it there.”
Margaret said nothing.
Claire turned another page.
Her face changed.
“What?” Jack asked.
She pulled out a notarized document.
Financial Power of Attorney.
Effective immediately.
Signed by Claire Mercer Vale.
Dated eight months earlier.
Claire’s hands shook.
“I never signed this.”
Jack read the notary line.
The seal belonged to Martin Shaw’s office.
Then he saw the witness.
CHARLES VALE.
Jack looked up.
Charles had gone completely white.
“I never witnessed that,” he said.
Margaret whispered, “Charles, be careful.”
He stared at her.
And suddenly Jack understood.
May you like
The forged document did not contain one fake signature.
It contained two.
