Chapter 7 - MY GRANDMOTHER'S SECRET
My grandmother had been dead for six years.
Yet suddenly she was controlling the room.
Her handwriting.
Her secrets.
Her warning.
I read the letter three times.
Then a fourth.
Claire,
If you are reading this, circumstances have forced truths into the open that I prayed would remain buried.
Arthur loves you more than anything in this world, but your father sees danger as something to defeat. Sometimes danger must be understood before it is confronted.
Richard Mercer and Samuel Cole were involved in something dangerous. Samuel discovered it too late.
I never trusted Richard.
I tried to keep you away from his family.
Grant Mercer was never supposed to meet you.
If he did, then someone ignored my warning.
I stopped.
"What warning?"
Dad held out his hand.
I gave him the letter.
He read silently.
His face became harder with every line.
Then he reached the end.
"What?"
I sat forward.
"What does it say?"
He handed the letter back.
The final paragraph read:
There is a photograph inside the blue ledger. When you find it, do not give it to Arthur until you understand why your mother is in it.
I forgot how to breathe.
"My mother?"
Dad went completely still.
My mother, Evelyn Vance, died when I was eleven.
A car accident.
Dad rarely spoke about it.
Grandma practically raised me afterward because Dad buried himself in work.
"What blue ledger?" I asked.
No one knew.
Agent Torres ordered a search of the safe-deposit contents.
Nothing blue.
Nothing resembling a ledger.
Dad stood at the window for a long time.
"Your grandmother knew something about Evelyn."
"What?"
"I don't know."
"You're lying."
He turned.
"I'm not."
"You always do that."
"Do what?"
"Decide what I can handle."
His face tightened.
"I was trying to protect you."
"That's what Grant used to say."
The words hit him.
I regretted them immediately.
But I didn't take them back.
Dad slowly sat.
"You're right."
That surprised me.
"I've protected you by controlling information."
He rubbed both hands over his face.
"And maybe that's partly why you believed secrecy was normal."
My anger weakened.
"My mother."
He stared toward the fireplace.
"Your mother knew Richard Mercer."
"How?"
"They grew up in the same social circles."
"How well?"
"Very."
Something in his voice made me cold.
"Did they date?"
Dad's silence answered me.
"Oh."
"It was before me."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it didn't matter."
"Apparently it did."
Dad nodded reluctantly.
"Evelyn and Richard were together for about a year in college."
Grant's father.
My mother.
The connections were becoming impossible.
"Did Grant know?"
"I don't know."
"Did Grandma?"
"Yes."
I leaned back.
My ribs still hurt every time I breathed deeply.
"Tell me everything."
Dad did.
My mother met Richard Mercer at nineteen.
They came from wealthy families.
Richard wanted to marry her.
She refused.
A few years later, she met Arthur.
They married.
Richard married someone else.
Grant was born.
Eventually, the men became business acquaintances.
"Was Richard jealous?"
Dad gave a tired laugh.
"Richard was jealous of everyone who had something he wanted."
"Did you trust him?"
"No."
"Then why invest with him?"
"Because your mother asked me to."
That stunned me.
"Why?"
"She said Richard was in trouble."
"What kind?"
"Debt."
Again.
Grant had inherited more than his father's name.
"He needed a legitimate investor for Harbor Nine redevelopment," Dad said. "Evelyn believed helping him would settle an old obligation."
"What obligation?"
"She never told me."
A knock interrupted us.
Hale entered carrying an evidence envelope.
"They found the blue ledger."
My stomach tightened.
"Where?"
"In Margaret Bennett's old house."
Dad frowned.
"We sold that property."
"The current owners are renovating. Investigators contacted them. One wall in Margaret's study had a false panel."
Of course Grandma had a false panel.
Hale placed gloves on before opening the envelope.
The ledger was faded navy leather.
Inside were handwritten entries.
Payments.
Dates.
Names.
Most meant nothing to me.
Then I saw one.
EVELYN — R.M. — 250,000.
Another.
SAMUEL — PROTECTION.
Another.
RICHARD KNOWS.
Then the photograph.
My hands trembled as Hale placed it on the table.
Four people stood on a marina dock.
My mother.
Richard Mercer.
Samuel Cole.
And my grandmother.
The date stamped in the corner was three months before my mother's fatal accident.
On the back, Grandma had written:
He threatened Evelyn. Samuel heard everything.
Dad stood so quickly the chair tipped backward.
"What?"
Hale held out one hand.
"Arthur."
"What does that mean?"
"We don't know."
Dad stared at my mother's face.
For years, he had believed her death was an accident.
I knew because that's what he told me.
A truck had run a red light.
Her vehicle flipped.
She died before reaching the hospital.
The truck driver had been drunk.
He served eight years in prison.
Simple.
Tragic.
Closed.
Except now Grandma's note suggested Richard Mercer had threatened her shortly before she died.
"Who was the truck driver?" I asked.
Dad answered automatically.
"Peter Walsh."
Hale was already searching.
His phone buzzed.
Then his expression changed.
"What?"
"Peter Walsh died three years ago."
"How?"
"Heart attack."
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
"Did he have any connection to Mercer?"
"We'll check."
The investigation accelerated.
By midnight, Agent Torres found one.
Six months before my mother's crash, Peter Walsh received $40,000 from a construction subcontractor.
The subcontractor's largest client?
Mercer Development.
Dad walked outside.
I followed despite the pain.
He stood beside the fountain.
Rain had finally stopped.
"Dad."
He didn't turn.
"Twenty-five years."
"What?"
"I spent twenty-five years believing it was random."
His voice cracked.
"I blamed myself because we'd argued that morning."
I had never heard this.
"About what?"
"Evelyn wanted me to sell Harbor Nine."
"Why?"
"She wouldn't say."
He turned toward me.
"She was scared."
The realization destroyed him.
"And I told her she was being irrational."
"Dad."
"That was the last conversation we had."
I touched his arm.
He looked down at me.
"I could have listened."
"You didn't know."
"I should have."
Those words sounded familiar.
I had said them to myself about Grant.
I should have known.
I should have seen.
I should have left.
Maybe guilt was another inheritance.
"Grandma knew," I whispered.
Dad nodded.
"Maybe."
"Why didn't she tell you?"
"Because she knew what I would do."
"What would you have done?"
His eyes moved away.
That answer was enough.
Inside, Hale called us back.
They had found something in the ledger.
A recurring payment.
Every year on the anniversary of my mother's death, my grandmother transferred money to someone identified only as P.W.
Peter Walsh.
Dad stared at the records.
"She paid him?"
"Possibly," Hale said.
"Why?"
No one knew.
Then Agent Torres discovered the last page.
A handwritten statement from my grandmother.
It was dated six months before she died.
Peter did not kill Evelyn. Richard paid him to confess because the real driver could never be exposed.
My stomach dropped.
Dad whispered, "Real driver?"
Below that line was one final sentence.
Claire must never learn her mother's killer was already part of our family.
My father and I stared at each other.
Part of our family.
There weren't many possibilities.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
Hale motioned for me to answer on speaker.
"Hello?"
A man's voice whispered:
"Mrs. Mercer?"
"Yes."
"I know who killed your mother."
My heart pounded.
"Who is this?"
"My name doesn't matter."
"Then tell me."
A long pause.
"You've been sleeping beside him for six years."
The call disconnected.
I stared at my phone.
Grant had been fifteen when my mother died.
Too young to be the driver.
Unless the caller didn't mean Grant.
Unless he meant the Mercer family.
Dad reached for the phone.
Before he could touch it, another message arrived.
A photograph.
Grant standing beside an elderly man.
Taken recently.
The man had gray hair, a cane, and a scar beside his left eye.
Dad looked at him.
And every trace of color vanished from his face.
"That's impossible."
"Who is he?"
My father whispered the answer.
"Richard Mercer."
May you like
Grant's father.
The man who had supposedly been dead for ten years.
