Chapter 7 - The Brass Key
Police arrived before midnight.
They photographed the broken window.
They collected the damaged frame.
They searched the yard.
No intruder was found.
Claire wanted Sarah to leave the house.
Sarah refused.
“This is exactly what Julian wants.”
“You don’t know it was Julian.”
“No.”
Sarah looked at the message on Thomas’s photograph.
“But someone is frightened.”
At sunrise, Sarah called the attorney who had managed Thomas’s estate.
Martin Hale answered immediately.
His reaction to the brass key was silence.
“Martin?”
“Where did you get that?”
“Thomas left it.”
Another pause.
“Bring it to me.”
An hour later, Sarah, Claire, and Noah entered Hale & Benton’s downtown office.
Martin locked his conference-room door.
Then he removed a gray metal box from a cabinet.
“This was deposited with me two weeks before Thomas died.”
Sarah stared.
“You had this for three years?”
“He instructed me never to release it unless you presented that key.”
Sarah inserted the brass key.
The lock opened.
Inside sat a flash drive.
Three notarized documents.
And a photograph.
Sarah picked up the photograph first.
Thomas stood beside Nathan Cole on a marina dock.
The date printed in the corner was three weeks before Nathan’s death.
On the back, Thomas had written one sentence.
NATHAN MADE A COPY.
Martin inserted the flash drive into an offline laptop.
Folders appeared.
BANK TRANSFERS.
BOARD MINUTES.
VICTORIA.
NATHAN.
JULIAN.
Claire stared at her husband’s name.
Sarah opened the transfer folder.
Hundreds of transactions filled the screen.
Payments had moved from Mercer Development into consulting companies.
Those companies had then paid other companies.
Eventually, much of the money disappeared into accounts outside the United States.
Martin whispered.
“This could be tens of millions.”
Sarah’s eyes found one recurring recipient.
BLAKE STRATEGIC ADVISORY.
Victoria Blake.
Claire pushed away from the table.
“I’m going to be sick.”
Sarah opened Victoria’s folder.
Hotel records.
Messages.
Expense reports.
Photographs.
Then one video file.
Sarah clicked it.
Thomas appeared on-screen in his study.
He looked thin.
Tired.
Cancer had already taken much of his strength.
“If Sarah is watching this, then Julian crossed the line I hoped he never would.”
Claire started crying.
Thomas continued.
“Julian is not merely stealing.”
“He is being helped.”
Sarah leaned closer.
“There is someone inside the family trust feeding him information.”
Martin looked at Sarah.
Thomas stared directly into the camera.
“I believed I knew who it was.”
The video suddenly ended.
No name.
No explanation.
No second file.
Noah frowned.
“That can’t be all.”
Sarah checked the folder.
Then she noticed something.
The video filename ended with PART1.
There should have been a PART2.
May you like
But it was missing.
Someone had removed it.
