Chapter 4 - The Key That Wasn’t There
Police opened stuffed rabbit carefully.
No key.
Only Rachel’s hair, old cotton filling and a small patch of newer stitching inside left paw.
Something had been there.
Recently removed.
Forensic marks showed a narrow metal object had rubbed repeatedly against fabric.
Margaret had told truth.
A key had once been sewn inside rabbit.
Someone had taken it.
Who knew?
Rachel.
Margaret.
Possibly Vanessa.
Margaret explained rabbit belonged to Rachel’s mother, Helen.
After Helen died, Rachel kept it through college, marriage and motherhood.
Three weeks before Rachel’s death, she cut a small lock of her own hair.
Margaret watched her sew it into rabbit.
“That’s strange.”
Rachel smiled.
“It's supposed to be.”
Then she stitched tiny brass key deeper inside paw.
Margaret asked what it opened.
Rachel answered:
“Something William Carter thought Daniel should never see.”
Daniel felt anger toward dead father.
“What?”
“She never told me.”
Then why hair?
Rachel believed someone might open rabbit looking for biological evidence.
Hair would distract them.
“If they stop at hair, they were looking for wrong secret.”
“Who was ‘they’?”
“I don't know.”
Margaret then revealed why she resigned.
Morning after Rachel died, she entered nursery.
Toy box lid was open.
Rabbit missing.
She panicked.
Hours later Vanessa appeared carrying it.
Vanessa claimed police had moved it.
Police inventory proved otherwise.
Daniel confronted her.
Vanessa stopped denying.
“I took key.”
There it was.
“When?”
“After Rachel died.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew what it opened.”
Daniel stepped closer.
“What?”
Vanessa looked toward staircase.
“Not dressing room.”
“Then what?”
“A deposit box.”
Where?
First Carter National Bank.
Box 317.
Registered to Red Cedar Holdings.
Daniel had never heard of company.
Vanessa said Rachel discovered Red Cedar six weeks before death.
She found references in William’s old estate correspondence.
Red Cedar owned 26 percent beneficial interest in land beneath Carter Biomedical’s original manufacturing campus.
Land now worth approximately $42 million.
But more important than value:
Red Cedar possessed historical consent rights over redevelopment.
Carter Biomedical planned to sell campus.
Without Red Cedar consent, deal could face challenge.
Who owned Red Cedar?
That was what Rachel wanted to discover.
“What did you find in box?”
Vanessa whispered:
“Nothing.”
Daniel didn't believe her.
Then bank records arrived.
Box 317 had been opened exactly twice in eleven months.
First:
Vanessa.
The day after Rachel died.
Second:
an unidentified authorized visitor.
Three days ago.
Someone still had key.
Daniel looked at rabbit.
Vanessa had taken it.
But she no longer possessed it.
“Who did you give the key to?”
May you like
Her eyes filled.
“My mother.”
