At the far end of the room, three boxes had been pulled from the shelves. Their contents covered the floor—contracts, tax records, handwritten ledgers, and old board minutes.
A framed photograph lay facedown among them.
I picked it up.
Dad stood beside his younger brother, Marcus, at the opening of Whitmore Industries’ first distribution center in 1989. They were both smiling, though Dad’s smile looked strained.
Uncle Marcus had left the company twenty years ago after a bitter dispute no one discussed in front of us.
He had returned for the funeral.
Grant came down the stairs behind us, followed by a security guard.
“What happened?”
“You tell me,” I said.
Grant looked around.
“You think I did this?”
“You left the study less than five minutes before Mrs. Bell found the door open.”
“I went to make a call.”
“Our phones were on the desk.”
“I used the kitchen phone.”
The security guard lifted the coffee cup with a gloved hand.
“There are cameras in the upper hallway,” he said. “We can check who came downstairs.”
“No cameras in the basement?” I asked.
“Mr. Whitmore disabled them several months ago.”
That did not sound like Dad.
He trusted records more than memory and cameras more than promises.
We returned upstairs and gathered in the security room behind the kitchen. The monitors filled one wall with silent black-and-white images.
The guard rewound the footage.
At 1:14 that afternoon, Mrs. Bell carried flowers through the west corridor.
At 1:32, Grant arrived.
At 1:46, Owen entered.
At 2:03, I walked in from the rain.
Then, at 2:11, a man wearing a dark overcoat emerged from the rear stairwell and crossed toward the basement door.
His face appeared for only two seconds.
But it was enough.
Uncle Marcus.
Grant leaned closer to the monitor.
“That doesn’t make sense. Marcus left after the funeral.”
“Apparently not,” I said.
The guard advanced the video.
Marcus reappeared at 2:38, carrying a flat leather document case. He glanced over his shoulder, then exited through the greenhouse.
Dana touched the screen.
“Pause.”
The document case had a gold clasp shaped like a lion’s head.
I had seen it before.
It belonged to my father.
Dana returned to the study and checked the hidden steel box. She removed each item and arranged them on the desk.
Then she looked at me.
“One document is missing.”
“What document?”
“Your father’s final codicil.”
Grant swore under his breath.
Owen stared at the frozen image of our uncle.
I thought the missing money was the danger.
But someone had broken into Dad’s records after his death and taken the one document that could change everything.
### Part 6
We found Uncle Marcus before sunset.
He was staying at the Hawthorne Hotel in Boston under the name Michael Rowan, though he had made little effort to disguise himself. When Dana called his room, he answered on the second ring.
“I wondered how long it would take,” he said.
Two hours later, he entered the conference room at Northstar’s headquarters wearing the same dark coat from the security footage.
The lion-clasp document case was not with him.
Marcus was sixty-eight, tall and lean, with the Whitmore family’s gray eyes. He looked more like Dad than either of my brothers did, which made the sight of him feel wrong.
Grant stood as soon as Marcus entered.
“Where is the codicil?”
Marcus removed his gloves finger by finger.
“No hello?”
“You broke into the manor.”
“I used a door I helped build.”
“You stole from Dad’s safe.”
Marcus glanced at me.
“Richard did not own that safe.”
I stayed seated at the head of the table.
“Where is the document case?”
“Safe.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It is the only answer you’re getting until I know whether Richard’s instructions were followed.”
Dana placed both hands on the table.
“I am the executor.”
“You’re one executor.”
Dana’s expression shifted.
That was the first moment I realized Marcus knew something she did not.
He reached into his coat and removed a yellowed envelope. Dad’s signature crossed the seal.
“Richard appointed me as special custodian of a supplemental trust.”
Grant stepped forward.
“Then open it.”
Marcus ignored him.
“Three months ago, Richard contacted me for the first time in nineteen years. He said someone inside the family had discovered the Northstar structure and was preparing to challenge it.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who?”
“He didn’t know.”
“You expect us to believe that?” Grant asked.
“No. I expect Claire to verify it.”
Marcus slid a flash drive across the table.
I inserted it into the conference room computer.
The screen filled with scanned correspondence, telephone logs, and photographs.
One photograph showed Dad meeting Marcus at a roadside café.
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