Chapter 7 - Margaret’s Music Box
Police retrieved the music box.
Richard had kept it because Margaret gave it to Emma as child.
Why in his bedroom instead of Emma’s?
After Margaret’s death, Emma refused most belongings.
Richard stored them.
When Emma later asked for box, Eleanor claimed mechanism broken.
It had remained forgotten.
Inside velvet lining investigators found narrow sealed cavity.
A preserved laboratory slide and small dried blood card.
Label:
EMMA H. — 2004 — ORIGINAL.
DNA testing would take time.
But Caroline believed it was Emma’s true childhood sample.
If matched current Emma, Sophie’s supposed maternal mismatch vanished.
Then guardianship conspiracy lost medical pretext.
But Patricia had already disappeared.
Her car was found at train station.
No evidence she boarded train.
Phone left inside.
A deliberate dead end.
Maya examined Patricia’s finances.
No sudden fortune.
No payment from Eleanor.
No payment from Richard.
No Northbridge-like corporate scheme. Keep distinct.
But Hale Family Foundation had been undergoing audit.
Patricia managed records.
Three months earlier auditors found unexplained payments totaling $640,000 over six years to:
Morrow Family Services.
A nonprofit supposedly providing emergency maternal housing.
Address belonged to vacant office.
Patricia approved invoices.
Richard, as foundation chairman, had signed annual summaries but not individual payments.
Was guardianship fraud designed to distract from embezzlement?
Possibly.
But why Sophie?
Maya found Morrow Family Services incorporation.
Director:
Patricia Wynn.
Under maiden name:
Patricia Morrow.
That looked like theft.
Yet bank records showed money did not go to Patricia personally.
Most funds paid legitimate rent, medical bills and childcare for twenty-three women.
The nonprofit was real in function, fake in disclosure.
Patricia had secretly used foundation money to support families who did not meet Hale Foundation eligibility rules.
Improper.
Potentially fraudulent.
But not personal enrichment.
Why hide?
Because one recipient mattered.
Rachel Wynn.
Patricia’s daughter.
Emma had never known Patricia had daughter.
Rachel was twenty-nine.
Almost Emma’s age.
Medical records protected, but public records showed Rachel had given birth four months earlier.
Then Caroline reacted to name.
“Rachel Morrow?”
Maya nodded.
Caroline went pale.
“I delivered her.”
Twenty-nine years earlier.
Before Emma was born? Emma 30, Rachel29. Close.
“Who was her father?” Emma asked.
“I don't know.”
“Mother?”
Caroline stared at Patricia’s photograph.
“Patricia.”
Nothing surprising.
Then she added:
“But Margaret was in delivery room.”
Why?
Margaret and Patricia had been best friends before Patricia worked for Richard.
Caroline remembered something else.
After Rachel’s birth, infant needed emergency blood typing.
Margaret signed one hospital form because Patricia was sedated.
Could the copied handwriting source actually originate there?
Patricia had decades of access to Margaret’s writing.
Emma’s forged signature may not be copied simply from school record.
Patricia could reconstruct family handwriting easily.
Then DNA result arrived.
The hidden original 2004 sample matched Emma.
And Emma matched Sophie exactly as biological mother should.
No maternity mystery.
No baby swap.
No hidden adoption.
Page Four discrepancy was entirely caused by Margaret’s old substituted childhood sample.
Emma looked at Sophie and exhaled.
One question solved.
But guardianship remained.
Then Maya received security footage.
The person who reset Caroline’s archive password at Lakeside Medical Library removed coat while leaving.
Patricia Wynn.
She had created fake Emma email.
She had accessed school signature.
She had forged guardianship trail.
Patricia was culprit.
Or at least document forger.
But she had an accomplice.
Footage showed Patricia hand flash drive to a man waiting outside.
Richard watched screen.
His face changed.
Emma noticed.
“You know him.”
Richard whispered:
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“My attorney.”
Daniel Cross.
May you like
The man who drafted Mercer? No, Hale family estate documents after Margaret died.
And the same attorney who had prepared Sophie’s Temporary Guardianship Form.
