Chapter 6 - WHAT MY FATHER KNEW
I stepped toward Charles.
“My father would never accept a bribe.”
Charles gave me a tired smile.
“That is what made him so difficult.”
Mercer instructed him not to speak without his attorney.
Charles ignored him.
“Thomas Bennett reviewed the original foundation plans for this estate.”
“This estate?” I asked.
He looked around the archive room.
“The winery, the production tunnels, and the underground storage chambers.”
My father had never mentioned the Caldwells.
He had told me stories about bridges, hospitals, and old government buildings.
He had encouraged me to become an engineer because structures could not survive on appearances alone.
A building either carried its weight or it failed.
Now his words felt like a warning delivered years too early.
“What did he discover?”
Charles glanced at Mercer.
The investigator switched on a recorder.
Charles continued.
“Parts of the estate were constructed over abandoned mining tunnels.”
“The county required them to be filled.”
“My father chose a cheaper solution.”
“He falsified the completion records.”
“Your father found the voids during a renovation assessment.”
“What happened after that?”
“He threatened to report us.”
“But he didn’t.”
Charles’s eyes moved toward the cabinets.
“Someone convinced him to wait.”
“Who?”
He did not answer.
Eleanor entered the room accompanied by her attorney.
“Charles, say nothing else.”
He looked at her.
For the first time, I saw hatred between them.
“You already destroyed Adrian,” Eleanor said to me.
“Is that not enough?”
“I didn’t destroy Adrian.”
“He attacked me.”
“You humiliated him.”
“He committed a crime.”
“He is your husband.”
“He stopped being my husband when he used my head as a target.”
Eleanor’s attorney whispered to her.
She ignored him.
“Your father understood loyalty.”
“My father understood engineering.”
“Then perhaps you should ask why he signed our confidentiality agreement.”
She pointed toward one of the cabinets.
Investigators opened it.
Inside was a thin file bearing my father’s name.
The first page contained a confidentiality agreement.
The signature looked real.
The date was twenty years earlier.
Beneath it was proof of a payment for eight hundred thousand dollars.
The money had been transferred to an account in my father’s name.
I felt sick.
Mercer examined the records.
“Mrs. Bennett, were you aware of this account?”
“No.”
“Did you inherit it?”
“No.”
Eleanor smiled faintly.
“Your father was no different from anyone else.”
I refused to believe her.
My father had died with modest savings and an unfinished mortgage.
He had not possessed eight hundred thousand dollars.
Maya examined the bank information.
“The receiving account did not belong to Thomas Bennett.”
“The middle initial is wrong.”
My father’s middle name was James.
The account listed Thomas Richard Bennett.
Mercer looked toward Charles.
“Who controlled that account?”
Charles remained silent.
Then Lena, the young server, appeared beside Ruiz.
She carried a box retrieved from the security office.
“We found this inside the destroyed server cabinet.”
She placed an old cassette recorder on the table.
A label had been attached to it.
May you like
THOMAS BENNETT MEETING.
The recording was dated two days before my father’s fatal car accident.
