Chapter 5 - The Lake House
Detective Brooks wanted me to stay away from the lake house.
I wanted to listen.
Then Amelia told me about the locked room.
“They took me there Friday night,” she said. “I woke up in the upstairs guest room. Curtains nailed shut. Door locked from the outside.”
“Who took you?”
“I never saw the driver.”
“Mother?”
“I heard her.”
My chest tightened.
“She came into the room the next morning. Diane was with her.”
“What did they want?”
Amelia looked toward Noah, who was coloring quietly in the corner under Mei’s watch.
“Your father’s trust documents.”
My father, Thomas Reed, had died eighteen months earlier. Cancer. Fast, brutal, unfair. He had left Reed Development to a family trust until Noah turned twenty-five. I was acting CEO. Mother chaired the foundation. Diane managed several family holdings.
“What documents?” I asked.
“An amendment.”
“There was no amendment.”
“There is now.”
I stared at her.
“They wanted me to sign a statement saying I found it in your father’s private files before he died.”
“Why you?”
“Because I was the last person outside the family who helped him organize his study.”
Dad had trusted Amelia. Sometimes more than he trusted me.
“What does the amendment do?”
“It removes you as controlling trustee.”
I felt the room tilt.
“And gives control to who?”
She didn’t answer immediately.
She didn’t have to.
“My mother.”
Amelia nodded.
“And if I refused?”
Her eyes filled.
“They showed me pictures of Noah at school.”
Across the room, my son held up a blue crayon and asked Mei which color made a better dinosaur.
My hands shook.
Amelia gripped them.
“There’s more.”
“Tell me.”
“Your father knew someone was stealing from the company before he died.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“But he recorded a conversation.”
The dead backup phone was now with police technicians.
I looked at her.
“Is that the recording?”
She nodded.
Then her face went white.
May you like
“No. Daniel. The recording on the phone isn’t your father.”
“It’s mine.”
