Chapter 12: The Hidden Fortune
The drive home felt different. The crushing weight of anxiety that had sat on my chest for the last forty-eight hours had finally begun to lift. I pulled into my driveway, ignoring the lingering tire tracks on the lawn left by Marcus’s truck. The house was quiet. The locks were changed. It was finally ours again.
When I walked into the living room, Evelyn was sitting on the couch, folding a pile of freshly washed baby clothes. The bruised, exhausted look was beginning to fade from her face, replaced by a cautious, fragile peace.
"Did she show up?" Evelyn asked, putting down a tiny onesie.
I didn't say a word. I walked over, knelt in front of her, and pulled the small velvet box from my pocket. I placed it gently into her hands.
Evelyn stared at the box for a long moment before slowly opening the lid. When she saw her grandmother’s antique diamond ring sitting on the black velvet, a choked sob escaped her lips. She covered her mouth, tears streaming down her face.
"She had it," I explained softly. "She stole it to hold as collateral. To keep you off-balance. She tried to use it to bribe me into dropping the charges."
"Oh, Colin," Evelyn wept, slipping the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly. "I thought I was losing my mind. I tore the house apart looking for this. She watched me cry over it, and she said I was just being irresponsible."
"She’s gone, Evie," I said, wrapping my arms around her. "She’s back in jail. And she’s not getting out this time. She confessed to hiding sixty thousand dollars in stolen cash in a lockbox, and I got the whole thing on tape. The detective has it."
Evelyn pulled back, her eyes wide. "Sixty thousand? Where would she even hide that much money?"
That was the million-dollar question. I spent the rest of the evening on the phone with Arthur Vance, my attorney, going over the recording.
"This is a massive break, Colin," Arthur said, his voice crackling over the speakerphone. "But a confession is only half the battle. We need to find that lockbox before one of her flying monkeys—like your Aunt Martha—figures out where it is and empties it."
"She said it was a private lockbox," I recalled. "Untraceable by the courts. That means it’s not a standard bank safe deposit box under her name. It’s a private vault service, or maybe she rented it under an alias."
Evelyn, who was rocking a sleeping Jamie in her arms, suddenly spoke up. "Indiana."
I looked at her, confused. "What?"
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"When I was looking through the mail before she started intercepting it, I saw a brochure," Evelyn explained, her brow furrowed in concentration. "It was for a place called Secure Storage Solutions across the river in Jeffersonville, Indiana. She told me she was looking into a storage unit for some of her old furniture. But they don't do storage units. They do private, high-security vaults."
Arthur chuckled through the phone. "Evelyn, you are a genius. I’ll call Detective Miller right now. We’re getting a warrant for that facility first thing tomorrow morning."
