Chapter 3 - WHAT DAD BUILT
My father hated manufactured furniture.
Not because all of it was bad.
Because he could not stop himself from checking joints.
Restaurants.
Hotels.
Waiting rooms.
He would run a thumb beneath tables and mutter:
“Staples.”
Like he had discovered corruption.
Romy adored him.
She would sit on a stool in his workshop wearing pink hearing protectors while he sanded.
The rocking horse took him three months.
Not because it was complicated.
Because chemotherapy made his hands shake.
I remembered visiting one evening.
He was carving the curve beneath the horse’s neck.
“You don’t need to finish it,” I told him.
He glared.
“I’m dying, not lazy.”
That was Dad.
The horse was finished two months before Romy’s third birthday.
He gave it to her himself.
She named it Pickles.
Nobody knew why.
My brother disliked it immediately.
“Dad, you could’ve bought her something nice.”
Dad looked at him.
“I did.”
It had been a small argument.
At least I thought so.
Now I replayed it differently.
The morning after Christmas, Naomi and I went through old company records I still possessed.
My original membership certificate.
Twenty percent.
Issued thirteen years earlier.
Operating agreement.
Dad sixty.
My brother twenty.
Me twenty.
No expiration.
No clause saying leaving employment canceled ownership.
That was encouraging.
Then my tax records.
For several years after I left Norwood Woodworks, I still received Schedule K-1 forms showing ownership income.
Then they stopped.
I had asked the family accountant.
He said:
“Your redemption was processed.”
I assumed he knew more than I did.
That sentence now embarrassed me.
Naomi asked:
“Did you receive redemption proceeds?”
“I received $180,000 around that time.”
“For what?”
“Dad called it a separation payment.”
“Was there an agreement?”
“I signed paperwork.”
Finally.
Something.
We requested it.
The accountant sent a scanned file.
MEMBERSHIP INTEREST REDEMPTION AGREEMENT.
My signature.
Twenty percent transferred back to Norwood Woodworks.
Price:
$180,000.
I stared.
“That looks like my signature.”
“Do you remember signing?”
“I remember signing a separation and noncompete package.”
“Could this have been included?”
“Maybe.”
Naomi did not let me escape.
“Maybe is not no.”
Correct.
We needed more.
The agreement was dated the same week as my $180,000 payment.
That made my brother’s version plausible.
Then Naomi noticed something.
The payment memo in my old bank statement:
SEVERANCE / PROJECT CLOSEOUT.
Not equity redemption.
Could still be loosely labeled.
But different.
The redemption agreement referenced:
Board approval attached as Exhibit B.
Exhibit B was missing from the accountant’s scan.
The document also required a valuation schedule.
Missing.
We requested the complete file.
The accountant said the physical archive had been transferred after Dad’s death.
To whom?
My brother.
Of course.
Then we turned to the key.
A locksmith identified the blank type.
Old industrial cabinet or private lockbox.
Probably not a modern bank safe-deposit key.
Number 214 might be cabinet numbering.
Where had Dad kept private storage?
The old Norwood workshop.
There were hundreds of lockers.
Tool cabinets.
Records rooms.
My brother had closed part of the original building after Dad died.
I had not been inside in nearly two years.
Naomi sent formal notice:
Preserve all records.
Do not alter or destroy estate property.
My brother’s attorney replied the same afternoon.
The key is believed to correspond to obsolete personal storage belonging to decedent. Larkin has no authority to enter restricted company premises.
Not:
We don’t know what it is.
Believed.
That word told me my brother knew.
Then my cousin called.
The same woman who whispered at Christmas when the key fell.
“What did you mean when you said ‘oh my God’?” I asked.
She went quiet.
“Your dad used to wear that key.”
“Where?”
“On a chain inside his shirt.”
My pulse changed.
“Did you know what it opened?”
“No.”
“Why did you react?”
“Because after he died, your brother searched everywhere for it.”
I stopped breathing.
“How do you know?”
“I was helping clean Dad’s office. Your brother kept asking whether anyone found a little brass key.”
“Did he say why?”
“No.”
Then she whispered:
“But he was furious when we couldn’t.”
The horse was made before Dad died.
The key disappeared before the estate inventory.
And my father had placed it inside something my brother considered trash.
That did not prove a crime.
It proved Dad wanted the key somewhere specific.
May you like
The next question was whether he wanted me to find it.
Or Romy.
