PART 6
I straightened in my chair.
“Secure everything.”
He nodded once.
“And the house?” he asked.
I thought of Jennifer in my kitchen, her voice crisp and satisfied. I thought of Matthew staring at the floor. I thought of Olivia’s brave little face and Jack clutching his toy dinosaur.
“Not yet,” I said.
Arthur studied me.
“I don’t want the children frightened by deputies at the door,” I continued. “And I don’t want Jennifer warned before I understand what Robert left behind.”
“That is wise.”
“But I am not sleeping beside the garage again.”
“No,” Arthur said firmly. “You are not.”
For the first time since the funeral, something inside me steadied.
Not anger.
Resolve.
Arthur made several phone calls while I sat in the conference room drinking tea I barely tasted. He contacted the bank that held the trust accounts. He placed alerts on investment transfers. He arranged for a locksmith to meet us at the Dallas house, discreetly, later that afternoon. He called a private security consultant Robert had used years earlier, not for drama, but for documentation and calm presence.
Then he turned to the flash drive.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
No.
“Yes.”
He inserted it into an offline laptop.
The drive contained three folders.
Financial.
Jennifer.
Children.
My heart stumbled at the third one.
Arthur opened the financial folder first.
There were spreadsheets, scanned checks, copies of emails between Jennifer and someone named Cal Mercer, and bank records showing repeated transfers from an account tied to Matthew’s small real estate company.
The amounts varied.
Five thousand.
Twelve thousand.
Twenty-three thousand.
Always labeled consulting.
Always routed through a limited liability company I had never heard of.
“Is this illegal?” I asked.
“Possibly,” Arthur said. “It depends on ownership, authorization, and disclosure. At minimum, it suggests hidden financial pressure.”
“Pressure on Matthew?”
“Yes.”
He opened another file.
It was an email from Jennifer to Cal Mercer.
Matthew is close. Once Robert is gone, I can get him to sign the house paperwork. Evelyn won’t fight. She doesn’t understand money.
I sat very still.
She doesn’t understand money.
Forty-two years of marriage, and Jennifer thought I had spent them learning nothing.
Arthur did not comment. He simply saved a copy into his secure system.
Then he opened the Jennifer folder.
The first document was a public record search. The second was a court filing from another state dated sixteen years earlier.
Jennifer Mercer.
Not Jennifer Lane, the maiden name she had given us when she married Matthew.
Mercer.
I looked at Arthur.
“Cal Mercer,” I said.
May you like
He nodded slowly. “Likely a relative.”
We read further.
