Chapter 10 - The Heir They Buried.
Charlotte nearly dropped the phone.
Daniel caught her elbow.
"What is it?"
She could not answer.
The voice came again.
"Charlotte, don't listen to him."
Her knees weakened.
"Dad?"
Vanessa stared at her.
Miriam covered her mouth.
Victor chuckled on the line.
"There it is."
"The sound of a family ghost coming home."
Charlotte pressed the phone against her ear.
"My father died thirteen years ago."
"No," Victor said.
"Your father disappeared thirteen years ago."
Charlotte's mind filled with old images.
A funeral without a body.
Charlotte remembered asking why she could not say goodbye.
Her mother had held her so tightly that Charlotte could barely breathe.
Eleanor had said there was nothing left to see.
For years Charlotte thought that sentence referred to the damage from the crash.
Now she wondered whether it had been a warning Eleanor was too afraid to explain.
A closed casket.
Her mother refusing to let Charlotte see him.
Doctors saying the accident had been too severe.
She had been sixteen and too shattered to question any of it.
"Put him back on."
"Find the ledger first."
The call ended.
Charlotte stared at the screen.
Daniel spoke carefully.
"It could be a recording."
"No."
Charlotte's voice trembled.
"He called me Birdie."
"Only my father called me that."
Miriam looked suddenly older.
"Eleanor knew."
Charlotte turned on her.
"Knew what?"
Miriam sank into the empty chair.
"There were rumors after Thomas Vale's accident."
"Victor insisted the body had to be cremated immediately because of the damage."
"Eleanor fought him for weeks afterward."
Charlotte's grief turned into anger.
"And none of you told me?"
Miriam shook her head.
"We had no proof."
Vanessa walked toward the west wall.
"Then let's get some."
She pulled away an old framed print.
Behind it was a steel safe door.
Charlotte inserted the brass key.
The mechanism turned.
Inside sat three ledgers, two passports, and a sealed envelope marked THOMAS.
Charlotte opened the envelope first.
A photograph slid out.
It showed her father alive.
Older.
Thin.
Standing beside a newspaper dated only four months earlier.
Charlotte gripped the desk until her fingers hurt.
Daniel opened one of the ledgers.
Columns of transfers filled the pages.
Millions had moved through companies Charlotte had never heard of.
At the bottom of several pages were Victor's initials.
Miriam pointed to another name.
Arthur Bell.
Board chairman.
Vanessa turned a page.
Her own father's signature appeared beside a twenty-eight-million-dollar transfer.
Her face changed.
"He told me Victor was blackmailing him over taxes."
Charlotte looked at her.
"Maybe he wasn't being blackmailed."
Vanessa went silent.
A paper fell from the back of the ledger.
Daniel picked it up.
It was a medical invoice.
Private neurological care.
Remote facility.
Patient listed under the name Timothy Voss.
The date began six months after Thomas Vale's supposed death.
The payments came from a Solmere shell company.
Charlotte read the facility name.
St. Arden Recovery Center.
Miriam's eyes widened.
"That's outside the city."
Daniel checked the board meeting notice again.
10:02 p.m.
They had less than ninety minutes.
Charlotte closed the ledger.
"We have enough to stop the vote."
Miriam shook her head.
"Not if Arthur controls the meeting."
"He can challenge every document and delay certification."
Charlotte looked at the medical invoice.
"Then we don't just stop the vote."
"We bring back the man whose death gave Victor his first piece of this company."
Daniel's phone rang.
He answered.
His expression turned grim.
"Charlotte."
"The police just found Victor's car."
"Where?"
May you like
Daniel looked at the medical invoice in her hand.
"Outside St. Arden Recovery Center."
