Chapter 5 - GOLDEN CREST
Maya wanted me to contact Sergeant Ruiz immediately.
She was right.
Walking back into the Caldwell estate alone would have been reckless.
We sent Ruiz photographs of the key and the anonymous message.
She called less than two minutes later.
“Do not return to the estate without law enforcement.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You were considering it.”
I looked at Maya.
She raised one eyebrow.
“Maybe for half a second.”
Ruiz sighed.
“We secured the security room.”
“Someone destroyed two servers, but we recovered one backup drive.”
“Did it record the assault?”
“We believe so.”
She paused.
“We also found documents relating to Golden Crest.”
Maya leaned closer to the phone.
“What kind of documents?”
“Inspection records.”
“Loan agreements.”
“Payments to municipal officials.”
“That sounds larger than a property dispute,” I said.
“It is.”
Ruiz lowered her voice.
“The district attorney has requested state investigators.”
“We are executing another warrant at the estate this morning.”
“I need you to identify the reports that were taken from your apartment.”
I agreed to meet them at nine.
Before leaving, I opened my original Golden Crest report from an off-site backup.
The project had been planned on land bordering an old river channel.
My calculations showed a serious liquefaction risk during an earthquake.
The proposed foundation was not deep enough.
I had recommended expensive soil stabilization and redesigned piles.
Caldwell Holdings rejected the recommendations.
They claimed the corrections would delay construction by a year.
My firm withdrew.
Three weeks later, another engineering company approved the original design.
Now I understood why.
The report seized at the estate carried my professional seal.
It stated that the site was safe.
It was a forgery.
When we arrived at the vineyard, investigators filled the driveway.
The elegant entrance had been marked with yellow evidence tape.
Eleanor stood near the fountain in a cream-colored coat.
Her expression turned poisonous when she saw me.
“You brought this into my home.”
I stopped several feet away.
“Adrian brought it into your home when he attacked me.”
“You could have handled the matter privately.”
“You forged my name.”
Her eyes flickered.
“That is an absurd accusation.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
It was the same sentence I had used the night before.
She recognized it.
Ruiz approached us.
“Mrs. Bennett, we found the archive room.”
The brass key opened a narrow door hidden behind a wine rack.
Inside were floor-to-ceiling cabinets filled with contracts.
Each cabinet was labeled with the name of a Caldwell company.
Golden Crest occupied six drawers.
I examined the forged reports.
Whoever created them had copied my old digital seal.
They had also copied phrases from earlier inspections.
The work was sophisticated.
It was not the kind of forgery Adrian could have completed alone.
A state investigator named David Mercer asked me to inspect the final page.
At the bottom was a second approval.
The signature belonged to Thomas Bennett.
My father.
My father had been a respected civil engineer before his death six years earlier.
The approval was dated eight months ago.
Someone had forged the signature of a dead man.
I stared at the page until the letters blurred.
Mercer spoke carefully.
“Did your father ever work for Caldwell Holdings?”
“Not that I know of.”
A voice came from the archive doorway.
“He did.”
We turned.
Charles Caldwell stood between two investigators.
His expression was exhausted.
May you like
“Your father discovered the truth twenty years ago.”
“And we paid him to keep it buried.”
