Chapter 5 - Schedule C.
David left the basement with a copy of the hidden drive inside his jacket.
He did not return to the ballroom immediately.
He called Rachel Kim and told her to meet him in the library.
"Bring nothing from Hale's office," he added.
Rachel arrived four minutes later with her phone and a legal pad.
David locked the door.
"I need you to tell me what Schedule C is."
Rachel frowned.
"Schedule C of what?"
He placed the photograph of the trust page on the desk.
Rachel read it silently.
Her expression changed.
"Where did you get this?"
"From Emily."
"Emily?"
"A hidden archive."
Rachel read the paragraph again.
"I have never seen this version of the Walker residential trust."
"Hale has handled the trust for twenty years."
"Which means every copy in our firm's system came through him."
David leaned against the desk.
"What happens under Schedule C?"
"I don't know until we find it."
"Find it."
Rachel opened her firm's secure document portal.
The trust file appeared immediately.
Schedule A listed the mansion and surrounding property.
Schedule B identified David as trustee during Lucy's minority.
There was no Schedule C.
Rachel scrolled twice.
"It's missing."
David almost laughed, but there was no humor in it.
"Of course it is."
Rachel searched the document history.
"This file was replaced eleven months ago."
"By whom?"
She looked at him.
"Jonathan Hale."
David paced toward the windows.
Below them, black cars lined the circular drive while guests entered a house whose ownership had suddenly become a mystery.
"If Lucy stops occupying the residence before I remarry, something changes."
"Potentially."
"Natalie and I were supposed to announce our wedding date tonight."
Rachel's eyes widened.
"When were you planning to marry?"
"Next month."
"And Natalie tried to remove Lucy from the main residence today."
"With forged temporary guardianship papers in Lucy's suitcase."
Rachel sat down slowly.
"David, those facts together are not accidental."
"I know."
"We need the original trust."
"Where would it be?"
"Hale's firm should have one, but if he replaced the electronic file, I wouldn't trust our archive."
David thought of Emily's habits.
She distrusted digital-only documents.
She printed contracts.
She wrote notes in margins.
She kept copies in places everyone else considered inconvenient.
"The blue cabinet," he said.
"What?"
"Emily kept estate papers in a blue cabinet at her mother's house."
Rachel looked confused.
"Her mother died years ago, didn't she?"
David paused.
"Emily told me they were estranged before we married."
"That's not the same thing."
"I was told Evelyn died while Emily was pregnant."
"Who told you?"
David searched his memory.
He could see the hospital corridor after Emily received the call.
He remembered Hale standing nearby.
He remembered Grant driving them home.
He remembered Emily refusing to discuss the funeral.
"Hale," David said quietly.
Rachel's face lost color.
"We need independent records on Evelyn."
David opened his phone and searched public databases through a private investigator his company retained.
While he waited, Rachel studied the trust photograph.
"There's something else."
"What?"
"The phrase sole minor beneficiary."
"Lucy."
"Maybe."
David looked at her.
"What do you mean, maybe?"
"Trust language is usually precise."
Rachel pointed at the sentence.
"It doesn't say Lucy."
"She's Emily's only child."
"Then why not name her?"
David had no answer.
His phone buzzed.
The investigator had found an Evelyn Mercer.
Age sixty-one.
Current driver's license.
Current voter registration.
Property taxes paid on a small house in Connecticut less than ninety miles away.
Alive.
David stared at the screen.
Mercer.
The surname struck him almost as hard as the word alive.
Natalie's last name was Mercer.
Rachel saw his expression.
"What is it?"
David turned the phone toward her.
"Evelyn's last name."
Rachel read it.
"Mercer."
"Emily's mother was Evelyn Mercer."
Rachel looked toward the library doors.
Beyond them, Natalie was somewhere inside the mansion wearing a perfect smile.
David remembered the note Hale had written beside Lucy's birth certificate.
Find the Mercer connection.
He had assumed Hale wanted to discover a connection.
Now he wondered whether it was an instruction to hide one.
A knock sounded at the library door.
David opened it halfway.
Owen, the head of security, stood outside.
"Sir, you asked me to tell you if Miss Mercer tried to leave."
"Did she?"
"No."
"Then what is it?"
Owen lowered his voice.
"She just requested a car for one of the guests."
"Which guest?"
Owen handed David a still image from the front gate camera.
An older woman with silver-streaked dark hair was sitting in the back of a sedan.
David had seen her face only in old photographs.
Evelyn Mercer was not only alive.
May you like
She had been inside David's house that night.
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