Chapter 6 - THE LANDLORD WHO WAS WAITING FOR HIM
Rebecca Mercer came to town the following Monday.
She was sixty-one, elegant, sharp-eyed, and carried a folder thicker than mine.
We met in Priya's office.
The first thing Rebecca said was:
“My father did not die naturally.”
I stared.
Detective Chen, who had joined us, immediately became still.
Rebecca continued.
“Officially, heart failure. But I never believed it.”
“Why?”
“Because Dad called me two days before he died and said Trevor was pressuring him to sign papers.”
She had lived overseas at the time.
By the time she returned, Harold was dead.
The apartment had been emptied.
Trevor was gone.
Rebecca found the forged deed months later and successfully challenged the transfer.
That was why Trevor never got ownership.
“So why rent the apartment to him now?” I asked.
She smiled without humor.
“Because he applied under his real name.”
I blinked.
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
“And accepted him anyway?”
“I wanted to know why he came back.”
Detective Chen did not look impressed.
“You should have contacted police.”
“I did.”
“When?”
“Eleven months ago.”
Chen frowned.
No report had reached her.
Rebecca produced emails.
A previous detective had noted the information but found no active crime.
Trevor rented 4B.
Paid on time.
Created no documented problem.
Until the tea bags.
My tea bags.
I almost laughed.
The stupidest behavior imaginable had reopened a fourteen-year-old chain of evidence.
Rebecca explained why Trevor returned.
Harold had owned a safe-deposit key.
One Rebecca never found.
Her father told her the box contained records proving financial exploitation by Trevor's father and possibly Trevor himself.
“My father hid the key somewhere in the apartment.”
“And Trevor thinks it's still there,” I said.
“Yes.”
“But you've renovated 4B.”
“Twice.”
“Did you find it?”
“No.”
Detective Chen looked at me.
“Maybe Margaret did.”
I thought of the missing keys after my mother's fall.
Trevor entered her apartment.
Maybe he searched.
Maybe he believed Mom had taken Harold's key.
Then something clicked.
My mother's balcony bench.
The cashbox required a key.
We had forced it open.
What if the missing key was never for the cashbox?
I returned home with Chen.
We searched Mom's old belongings again.
Nothing.
Then I picked up her blue ceramic bowl.
The one that had sat in my kitchen for twelve years.
Something rattled.
I turned it over.
A felt pad covered the base.
I peeled it back.
A small brass key fell into my hand.
Stamped on it:
CB-4172.
Not an apartment key.
Not a cashbox key.
A bank key.
Rebecca stared.
“Oh my God.”
Her father’s safe-deposit key.
The bank still existed.
The box had been inactive for more than a decade but never formally closed because ownership remained disputed after Harold’s death.
A court order was obtained.
Rebecca opened it with police present.
Inside were account statements.
Audio cassettes.
Copies of forged signatures.
And one small notebook.
Harold had documented every payment Trevor requested.
Every threat.
Every strange transaction.
Then we found something worse.
A bottle of prescription medication.
Harold's heart medicine.
Lab records from an independent pharmacy.
The pills had been substituted.
Rebecca covered her mouth.
Detective Chen went silent.
Trevor’s father had once been convicted of financial exploitation.
But these records suggested Trevor had learned a darker version.
At the bottom of the box was a handwritten note.
If I die suddenly, ask Margaret Parker what Trevor put in my pills.
May you like
My mother had known.
And Trevor knew she knew.
