Chapter 5 - THE FIFTEENTH EXPERT
Rowan Cain Sr. was not Rowan the security chief’s father.
Same family name.
Different branch.
Boston families made genealogy unnecessarily complicated.
He was Wesley’s father’s older brother.
Seventy-one.
Retired banker.
Respectable.
Museum donor.
University trustee.
Nobody called him dangerous.
That made Cora suspicious now.
Wesley brought independent investigators to his home.
No private threats.
Rowan Sr. welcomed them.
Then saw Patrick’s photograph.
His face changed.
“You found Mercer Storage.”
Not:
What is that?
He knew.
Wesley stared.
“How?”
Rowan sighed.
“Because Patrick told me.”
Cora went cold.
“When?”
“The day before he died.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That someone was stealing.”
“You?”
Rowan looked almost offended.
“No.”
“Then who?”
He did not answer immediately.
Instead:
“Patrick thought it was me.”
Reasonable.
Finance chief.
Authorization access.
Widow Fund.
Then Rowan said:
“I hired the first investigator.”
Wesley frowned.
“What investigator?”
“Twenty years ago.”
Not fifteen modern experts.
One original.
A forensic accountant named Eleanor Price.
She disappeared from the case after two weeks.
Why?
“She found something.”
“What?”
Rowan looked at Cora.
“Your mother.”
Cora’s chest tightened.
“My mother was dead.”
“Not yet.”
Timeline.
Cora’s mother, Marianne, died when Cora was six.
Patrick died about a year later.
So Marianne had been alive during early theft period.
“What did she have to do with Cain Freight?”
Rowan answered:
“She worked in accounts payable.”
Cora stared.
Her mother was part of it too.
Patrick and Marianne both inside financial system.
Both dead by the time she was seven.
Then:
“Was my mother involved?”
“In theft?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Immediate.
“She was helping Patrick.”
Good.
They discovered invoices were being duplicated using food suppliers.
Marianne flagged anomalies.
Patrick followed freight side.
Together they built code.
Restaurant inventory numbers.
Because they believed digital records could be altered.
Then Marianne became sick.
Cancer.
Fast.
Before she died, she gave Rowan Sr. one envelope.
He opened a safe.
Still had it.
Why never reveal?
Cowardice again.
Inside:
List of transfers.
Names.
One circled.
HELENA CAIN.
Wesley’s mother.
Impossible.
She had died six years before the theft began.
Then Cora understood.
Not person.
Her estate.
Someone used Helena Cain’s dormant estate entities to route money.
Who controlled them?
Wesley’s father and Rowan Sr.
Two trustees.
But signatures?
One belonged to neither.
Third trustee.
Family attorney:
Charles Vale.
Dead now.
Then Eleanor Price, the first expert, had concluded Vale was likely using Helena’s estate.
What happened to Eleanor?
Rowan looked ashamed.
“She was paid to stop.”
“By who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You accepted that?”
“I was afraid scandal would destroy Cain Freight.”
Wesley laughed bitterly.
Same disease.
Protect company.
Sacrifice truth.
Then Rowan handed over Eleanor’s unfinished report.
Page seventeen:
Beneficial recipient likely not Vale.
Vale is intermediary.
Final money appears routed to M.M.
Cora felt cold.
M.M.
Thaddius Mercer’s full legal name:
Thaddius Michael Mercer.
No.
Initials wrong.
T.M.
Who was M.M.?
Marianne Mercer?
No.
Then Cora looked at her mother’s maiden name.
Marianne Mercer.
She stared.
Thaddius was her mother’s brother.
Her uncle.
Not family friend.
He had lied even about that.
May you like
And M.M. could be Marianne Mercer.
Was Cora’s mother secretly receiving stolen Cain money?
