Chapter 11 - Ashes Under Glass
We reached the estate after firefighters had already contained the blaze. The greenhouse roof had collapsed inward. Blackened rose stems lay across the wet stone path, and Evelyn stood outside under a blanket, furious that somebody had stepped on her imported orchids.
“This is private property,” she shouted when she saw me.
“Then tell your husband to stop making public problems,” Ellis replied.
The fire chief said the source appeared suspicious but cautioned that investigators would determine the cause. Nora's planter had been overturned. Beneath it sat a metal box, its lid twisted from the heat. A firefighter handed it to Ellis after she documented its location.
Inside were several pages protected by a fire-resistant sleeve. Not the whole ledger, but enough. Each entry paired a flower name with a date, an amount, and initials. One line read: WHITE CAMELLIA / L. VALE / 18,000.
“Dr. Vale?” I asked.
Monica examined another entry. “M. PRICE / 0. That's my name.”
She looked alarmed, then found a handwritten note alongside it: APPROACH FAILED.
Evelyn came toward us. “You are tearing apart your own daughter's inheritance.”
“I want her childhood,” I said. “You can keep your inheritance.”
Daniel emerged from the house looking exhausted. For the first time, he didn't seem certain of what to say. He glanced at the bandage on my neck.
“Sarah, I never wanted this.”
“You watched it happen.”
“I thought Mom would apologize.”
“Did you?”
He couldn't answer.
I tried to walk past him, but he said, “Dad's going to say Robert set the fire. I know where he got that story. I can prove it's a lie.”
“Then tell Ellis.”
“He'll destroy me.”
I looked at the man I'd once trusted with everything. “That sounds like a choice you have to make.”
He reached into his pocket and gave Ellis a small black USB drive. “My father keeps backups. He thinks nobody knows.”
Ellis labeled the device. Daniel whispered, “There's a recording on that drive from the night the warehouse burned.”
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Before he said another word, Walter's voice rang out from the front steps: “Daniel, if you hand over my files, I'll tell the court whose child Lily really is.”
