Chapter 3 - The Locked Study
Harrison reached the study before anyone else.
He tried the brass handle once, hard.
Locked.
“Mara!”
The house manager came up the stairs with Eleanor and Daniel behind her. Sloan followed at a distance, no longer angry, now calculating.
Mara opened the door.
The study smelled the way it always had: cedar, old paper, and Thomas Caldwell’s pipe tobacco trapped in the curtains after two years. Eleanor had not changed a thing since the week he died.
Harrison crossed to the glass cabinet.
The center shelf was empty.
He turned.
“Where is Dad’s watch?”
Sloan spoke first. “Which watch?”
Harrison’s face hardened.
“The Patek he wore for thirty-five years.”
Eleanor moved to the desk. Thomas’s silver letter opener was there. His fountain pen was there. The framed photograph of Harrison at age ten was there.
But the green leather watch box was gone.
Daniel placed the auction printout on the desk.
The photograph showed the watch under white showroom lights.
Estimated private-sale value: $186,000.
Harrison read the page twice.
Then he looked at Sloan.
“You took it?”
“No.”
“The auction house got a picture of it.”
“That proves someone took a picture.”
“Who?”
Sloan folded her arms. “Ask the staff.”
Mara’s expression changed.
Eleanor noticed.
“Mara?”
The house manager swallowed. “Mrs. Mercer asked me for the study key three weeks ago.”
Sloan’s head snapped toward her. “That’s a lie.”
Mara flinched but continued. “She said Mr. Harrison wanted his father’s cuff links for the museum dinner.”
“I never asked for them,” Harrison said.
Sloan laughed once, sharp and humorless. “So now we’re trusting employees over family?”
Eleanor looked at her son.
Harrison did not answer.
That hurt Sloan more than if he had shouted.
She stepped backward.
Daniel opened another page from the packet.
“This is the part I was hoping was a clerical mistake.”
At the bottom was a seller authorization form.
The signature read: Eleanor Caldwell.
Eleanor stared at it.
The handwriting was almost perfect.
Almost.
Her real signature curved upward on the final “l.” This one did not.
Harrison whispered, “Mom?”
Eleanor touched the paper.
“I didn’t sign this.”
May you like
Sloan’s face went white.
And from the hallway behind them, a man’s voice said, “I know who did.”
