Chapter 11 - THE SECRET INSIDE THE LOCKET
No one touched the vial.
Ethan called the police.
Not local patrol officers.
A detective.
Then another investigator from the district attorney’s office arrived after Richard’s attorney explained the connection to the old property fraud.
The wedding had disappeared completely.
My mother’s locket now sat inside an evidence bag beneath fluorescent lights.
Lauren looked exhausted.
“This was around Grandma’s neck for years.”
I shook my head.
“No. Thomas had the locket repaired shortly before he died.”
I remembered him giving it back to me.
The hinge had broken.
At least that was what he claimed.
“He must have modified it.”
The detective, Maria Santos, asked us to wait while the vial was transported for preliminary testing.
It would take time.
Meanwhile, she listened to Michael’s recorded phone confession and contacted authorities to locate him.
Then she read Thomas’s papers.
“This wasn’t simply property fraud,” she said.
Richard frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“Several properties were purchased immediately before municipal rezoning decisions.”
David looked away.
Detective Santos noticed.
“You know something?”
David sighed.
“Halcyon had inside information.”
“From whom?”
“I never knew the real source.”
Samuel laughed.
“You never wanted to know.”
The detective flipped another page.
“Thomas did.”
She pointed to initials beside several payments.
E.C.
Everyone looked toward Evelyn.
Her face turned red.
“That isn’t me.”
Richard stared at the papers.
The initials appeared again.
E.C.
$45,000.
$62,000.
$38,500.
Ethan whispered:
“Who else had those initials?”
Nobody answered.
Then Richard’s expression changed.
“My father.”
Ethan looked confused.
“Grandpa Edward?”
Richard nodded.
Edward Cole.
Founder of Cole Industries.
Dead for seventeen years.
A respected businessman whose portrait hung in the lobby of every Cole office.
Samuel closed his eyes.
“You knew,” Richard said.
Samuel didn’t deny it.
“Our father funded Halcyon.”
“That isn’t the same as bribery.”
“No.”
Samuel looked at him.
“But Thomas believed Edward was paying a zoning commissioner.”
Lauren stared.
“So Ethan’s grandfather was behind everything?”
David interrupted.
“Not everything.”
Detective Santos looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
David leaned back.
“Edward hated scandal. If he learned Thomas was exposing Halcyon, he would have tried to stop him financially.”
“Not physically?”
“No.”
“You sound certain.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
David looked at Richard.
“Because Edward already knew Thomas.”
Richard frowned.
“How?”
“Before Thomas married Margaret, he worked one summer for Cole Industries.”
I stared.
Thomas had never told me that.
David continued.
“And during that summer, Edward discovered something about Thomas’s family that terrified him.”
Lauren asked:
“What?”
David looked at her.
“Your father wasn’t a stranger to the Coles.”
May you like
He paused.
“He was Edward Cole’s son.”
