Chapter 4 - What Charles Hid
Daniel smiled as if he had just won an argument instead of exposed himself.
"This belonged to my father."
Maya descended one stair at a time. "Then why was it hidden under Claire's chair?"
"It wasn't. Rosa planted it."
"With what motive?"
"She's confused. She's old."
Rosa had changed Daniel's diapers, bandaged his knees, and sat beside Charles during chemotherapy. Claire had never once heard Daniel call her old until Rosa became dangerous to him.
Officer Perez returned from the porch. "Mr. Bennett, put the key on the table."
Daniel's smile disappeared. "Am I under arrest?"
"No. I'm asking you not to interfere with property connected to an active complaint."
Daniel set the key down.
Two hours later Maya had an emergency court order preserving box 214. Claire watched by video from her hospital bed as a bank officer drilled through a secondary lock after Daniel refused to surrender the key voluntarily.
Inside were three things.
A sealed envelope.
A flash drive.
And a notarized codicil to Charles Bennett's will.
Maya read the first page twice.
"What?" Claire demanded.
Maya looked into the camera. "Charles changed the inheritance structure three weeks before he died."
Daniel had expected to receive voting control of Bennett Development, the family company, after Eleanor's lifetime interest ended. Instead, Charles had placed forty-one percent of the company into a protected trust for Daniel's first biological child.
If that child was born alive, the child's mother would control the trust until the child turned twenty-five.
Claire sat very still.
"How much is forty-one percent worth?"
"Current valuation? Around thirty-eight million dollars."
Claire stared at the fetal monitor.
The baby kicked beneath the straps.
"That's why."
Maya nodded grimly. "That is motive."
"What's on the flash drive?"
The bank officer plugged it into an isolated computer.
A single video file appeared.
Charles filled the screen, thinner than Claire remembered, sitting in his study.
"If you're watching this," he began, "then Daniel or Eleanor has challenged the codicil."
Claire stopped breathing.
Charles looked directly into the camera.
"I changed my will because I discovered my son had been stealing from the company, and my wife had been helping him hide it."
Maya whispered, "Oh my God."
Then Charles said, "Rosa has the original accounting records. Claire has the only child I trust them not to control."
The video abruptly cut to black.
Not ended.
Cut.
May you like
The file had been edited.
And somebody had removed whatever Charles said next.
