Chapter 4 - ELEANOR KNEW BEFORE I DID
The ranch looked exactly the way Eleanor loved it.
Golden porch lights.
Dark hills.
A long line of cottonwoods beside the river.
The main house had been built from stone and cedar forty years earlier, long before anyone cared what it might someday be worth.
Eleanor cared only that the kitchen faced sunrise.
Samuel left me alone in the library.
I opened her envelope.
The first line nearly broke me.
Thomas, if you are reading this, then I was right to be worried.
I sat down.
Eleanor had never dramatized anything.
If she said worried, she meant afraid.
Her letter explained that Madison had begun asking detailed questions about our holdings the previous year.
Not casual questions.
Trust questions.
Ownership questions.
Probate questions.
She had once walked into the guest wing and found Madison photographing a folder from my desk.
Eleanor confronted her.
Madison claimed she had been searching for insurance information for Eric.
My wife did not believe her.
She wrote:
I did not tell you because you would have confronted Eric, and I wanted to know whether our son was involved.
I closed my eyes.
Even then, Eleanor was protecting him.
The letter continued.
She had asked Samuel to quietly review our estate security.
That review revealed unauthorized searches against two holding companies connected to the ranch.
Someone had been researching what I owned.
And how to reach it after my death.
Then came the line that chilled me.
Madison is not the person I fear most.
I kept reading.
Frank Mercer contacted me three months ago.
He claimed he wanted to apologize for the past.
I did not believe him.
Neither did I.
Frank had once tried to force me out of a manufacturing company we built together.
He failed.
He lost millions when I bought his stake.
He never forgave me.
Eleanor had met him without telling me.
At a diner twenty miles from our house.
She wore a recording device.
My wife.
Seventy years old.
Five feet four inches tall.
Walking into a meeting with a man she did not trust because she wanted to protect me.
At the bottom of the envelope was a small flash drive.
I inserted it into the library computer.
There was one audio file.
Eleanor’s voice came first.
May you like
Then Frank’s.
And within thirty seconds, I heard him say Madison’s name.
