CHAPTER 9 - FIRE IN THE WEST WING
CHAPTER 9 - FIRE IN THE WEST WING
Smoke was already rising above Hartwell House when our cars reached the gates.
Flames moved behind the west-wing windows.
Fire crews covered the front lawn.
Russell exited before the vehicles fully stopped.
He shouted instructions while officers spread across the property.
My father tried to enter the house.
Two firefighters blocked him.
“The west wing is unstable.”
“My wife’s archive is in there.”
“Sir, you cannot go inside.”
The archive held my mother’s personal records.
Letters.
Contracts.
Journals.
Every document she had kept during the final years of her life.
Camille had not come for jewelry.
She had come to erase history.
Russell checked the security system.
A maintenance badge had been used to enter through the kitchen.
The badge belonged to a man who died two years earlier.
Inside the library, a hidden camera had captured Camille wearing a dark wig and a staff uniform.
She moved through the house as though she knew the floor plan.
She opened my father’s private safe using the correct code.
Only four living people knew that code.
My father.
Russell.
Me.
And Daniel Cross.
Camille removed a small metal box.
Then she poured an accelerant across the archive floor.
She left through the garden doors three minutes before the fire alarm activated.
“Can we track her?” I asked.
Russell shook his head.
“She entered a delivery van without plates.”
My father stood in the rain watching flames consume the west wing.
For the first time in my life, he looked old.
I moved beside him.
“What was in the metal box?”
He did not answer.
“Dad.”
“Your mother’s original share certificates.”
“Why were they in the house?”
“She did not trust electronic records.”
“Were the trust documents there too?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
His silence returned.
I turned toward him.
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“That is not true.”
He looked at the burning windows.
“Your mother gave me an envelope before her final surgery.”
“What was inside?”
“I never opened it.”
I stared at him.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“She made me promise.”
“Where is the envelope?”
“In a bank vault.”
“Which bank?”
“The First Lakeshore branch on Michigan Avenue.”
Russell overheard us.
“That branch closes in twenty minutes.”
My father checked his watch.
“We will not reach it before closing.”
A firefighter approached.
“Mr. Hartwell, we found something near the rear entrance.”
He handed Russell a clear evidence pouch.
Inside was a brass bank deposit key.
A tag attached to it bore the name First Lakeshore.
My father reached into his coat.
His own key was still there.
The recovered key belonged to someone else.
I looked toward the burning house.
Camille had known about the vault.
“She isn’t running,” I said.
“She’s going to the bank.”
Russell called his team.
The branch manager did not answer.
Neither did the security desk.
We reached Michigan Avenue seven minutes after closing.
The front doors were locked.
The lobby lights were dark.
Russell’s officers entered through the loading entrance.
We found the branch manager unconscious in his office.
The vault door stood open.
My father’s deposit box had been removed from the wall.
Camille was gone.
On the floor lay a white envelope addressed in my mother’s handwriting.
OLIVIA.
May you like
I picked it up.
It was empty.
