Chương 3
At the bottom, Thomas had signed Dad rather than his full name.
Paige set the pages down.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Traffic moved past the office window. A bus stopped below, released three people, and pulled away before one of them finished buttoning his coat.
“You let him turn us into suspects,” Paige said.
Penelope lowered herself into the chair opposite her. “I let him create a marker inside a document he feared someone would misuse.”
“He buried instructions for me.”
“I did not know about the letter.”
“You knew about the trap.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know he thought Kyle was involved?”
“He suspected Kyle could be pressured. That is different from knowing he was involved.”
Paige laughed once, without humor. “You sound exactly like him.”
“I have billed him enough hours to deserve that insult.”
Nora looked at the table again.
Penelope folded her hands. “Tomorrow’s meeting is not a ceremonial will reading. Calvin’s lawyer requested it after notifying us that he possesses a trust amendment dated six days before your father died. Until an hour ago, I had not seen the document.”
“But you knew what might be in it.”
“I knew what sentence to look for.”
“And if it’s there?”
“Then we preserve the document, request the original, compare it to the decoy, and ask how a private draft reached the person presenting it.”
“That proves Calvin saw a draft.”
“It proves more if the document reproduces errors, wording, and formatting that existed nowhere else.”
“Does it prove Dad didn’t sign it?”
“No.”
The plainness of the answer made Paige sit back.
Penelope continued. “A person can sign a document after seeing an earlier draft. A person can change his mind. A person can act against his own previous intentions. Your father’s letter is important, but it is not magic.”
“Then why call it a trap?”
“Because people who believe they have already won often explain things they should make us prove.”
Paige thought of Tabitha’s heel grinding white petals into the path.
“She already did.”
“Maybe. Your memory of her words matters. It will matter more if you wrote them down before hearing anyone else’s version.”
Paige took the legal pad Nora offered and began with the kick.
She wrote until her hand cramped.
At seven seventeen that evening, a Bellweather County deputy knocked on the office door.
Tabitha had reported that Paige threatened her with garden shears.
The deputy was young enough to look embarrassed when Penelope invited him into the conference room. He listened while Paige described the encounter. He asked whether she had moved toward Tabitha. Paige said no. He asked whether she had pointed the shears. She said no. He asked whether there was video.
“There may be silent security footage,” Penelope said. “We will preserve it.”
The deputy wrote something down.
“Mrs. Cole says you told her she had confessed.”
“I did.”
“To what?”
“I didn’t know exactly.”
The deputy glanced up.
Paige heard how foolish that sounded.
“She said my brother helped them because my father was confused when he signed something. She said her husband would get the house tomorrow.”
“Her husband is your brother?”
“Yes. Calvin.”
“And the other brother?”
“Kyle.”
The deputy paused over the family arrangement, then drew three short lines in his notebook as if a diagram might improve it.
“Did she say you threatened to kill her?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Did you say you’d make her regret anything?”
“No.”
“Did you block her from leaving?”
“No.”
Penelope slid the written statement Paige had completed across the table. “This was prepared before we knew a report had been made.”
The deputy read the first page. His shoulders relaxed slightly.
“No arrest,” he said. “I’m documenting both accounts. Don’t contact her tonight.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good plan.”
After he left, Paige stood by the office sink and drank water from a paper cup. The cup softened where her fingers held it.
Penelope leaned against the counter.
“Tabitha moved quickly.”
“She always does.”
“How long has she been married to Calvin?”
“Eight months.”
“How long has she known him?”
“Two years, depending on which anniversary they’re celebrating.”
Penelope took the empty cup from Paige and threw it away. “Go home. Lock the study. Do not speak to Calvin or Kyle before tomorrow.”
“Calvin lives at the house.”
“Not since your father’s death.”
“He still has keys.”
“Change the alarm code.”
“He’ll say I’m taking control.”
“You are the acting successor trustee under the uncontested documents. Taking control is not the same as stealing it.”
Paige pictured Calvin standing in the foyer with his coat over one arm, explaining to their father why another quarter had gone badly. He always lowered his voice when discussing money, as if debt responded to courtesy.
“What does the real trust say?”
Penelope looked at her for a moment. “Tomorrow.”
“You’ve already told me I’m trustee.”
“Because immediate preservation required it.”
“That sounds like something you say when you’ve decided the rules are kind.”
“The rules are rarely kind. Sometimes they are useful.”
Paige drove home after dark.
The passenger window remained stuck open. At a stoplight, a moth struck her cheek and vanished into the back seat. She laughed again, too sharply this time, and rubbed at the place it had touched her.
Everett House stood black against the last blue of the sky, three stories of pale stone and windows reflecting nothing. Her father had called it a mansion only when complaining about taxes. Everyone else called it Everett House, as if the family name had become a public building.
Paige entered through the kitchen and reset the alarm.
May you like
She checked every door twice. In the study, the locked drawer stood open by less than an inch.
Thomas’s desk was orderly in the way of a man who had made disorder someone else’s job. Three pens lay parallel beside a blotter. A brass letter opener rested beneath a paperweight shaped like a trout. The drawer contained old invoices, a dead calculator, and a rectangle of clean wood where a folder had once been.
