Chapter 6 - The Sister Under the Umbrella
“Penelope was sixteen when Mom died,” Rosalind said. “She couldn't have run a shipping fraud.”
“She didn't have to run it,” Tobias replied. “She only had to know.”
Rosalind remembered Penelope moving into their home with her father after Evelyn's funeral. Her half sister had been charming when visitors watched and cruel when they left. She stole small things—earrings, a school award, a birthday card—and insisted Rosalind had misplaced them.
“But Mom said her name.”
“Maybe she was warning her. Maybe she was warning us.”
A text came through on the cheap phone. Tobias had cloned Garrett's public alerts, not his private messages. A memorial service had been scheduled for the next evening at St. Andrew's Chapel.
“They're burying us without bodies,” Rosalind said.
“They're putting a story in the ground.”
They went to an old mechanic named Leon Price, who once serviced the family fleet. Leon had the weary look of someone who'd learned to answer questions with silence.
When Tobias walked into his garage, Leon dropped a wrench.
“I'll be damned.”
“Not yet,” Tobias said. “Tell her about the brake lines.”
Leon confessed he'd found evidence of tampering after Tobias's crash. Before he could report it, someone showed him photos of his young daughter outside her school. He had kept a copy of the repair invoice, hidden under a floorboard.
“Who's the one who signs with the wrong hand?” Rosalind asked.
Leon looked away. “Your mother noticed two sets of signatures on the permits. Same name, different strokes. Someone was signing for a dead man.”
He pulled a folder from a safe. Among the documents was a photo from fifteen years earlier: Garrett, much younger, standing beside Vance and Sheriff Halden. Garrett had told Rosalind he didn't meet Vance until seven years ago.
On the back, in Leon's handwriting, were four words.
Night Evelyn went missing.
May you like
The garage phone rang. Leon answered, listened, and turned white.
“It's my daughter,” he whispered. “They've taken her.”
