Chapter 8 - The Man in Grandma’s Photograph
Police found Lydia’s phone in a motel room.
Lydia was gone.
There was no blood.
No sign of forced entry.
Just an overturned chair and a missing suitcase.
Someone had reached her before we could.
Rebecca immediately placed the estate documents under court protection.
My parents’ accounts connected to Mercer Family Holdings were temporarily frozen.
That transformed Father’s fear into rage.
“This is your fault.”
I almost admired the consistency.
Twenty-one years earlier I was a complication.
Now I was responsible for exposing the people who created it.
Camille surprised me.
“Stop blaming her.”
Father stared.
Camille moved beside me.
For perhaps the first time in our lives, my sister chose my side.
Mother looked devastated.
Not because of us.
Because she was losing control.
Rebecca examined Grandma’s second photograph.
The one Mother had tried to stop me from reading.
It showed Caroline Sloane.
Daniel’s supposedly dead sister.
She was standing outside the Boston mansion.
Beside her was a young man.
Not Daniel.
Not Richard.
I recognized him from family portraits.
My grandfather Charles.
On the back Grandma had written:
Ask who purchased Hawthorne House in 1997.
That was the mansion’s original name.
Property records showed Charles Mercer purchasing it that year.
But Rebecca found an earlier unrecorded agreement.
The buyer was Caroline Sloane.
She had supplied nearly the entire purchase price.
“Where did a woman in her twenties get that money?” Camille asked.
Daniel answered quietly.
“Our mother.”
Their mother had inherited a substantial fortune.
Daniel received investments.
Caroline received cash and property.
Then Caroline supposedly died.
Charles somehow acquired everything.
Rebecca found no legitimate transfer.
Only another notarized document.
Again signed by Daniel.
Again, he denied signing it.
Someone had been forging his name for nearly three decades.
I stared at the affair photograph of Daniel and Mother.
“What if Grandma didn’t leave this to prove the affair?”
Rebecca understood immediately.
“What if Daniel’s presence in the photograph establishes where he was?”
The date was printed on the back.
June 18, 1998.
The same date Daniel supposedly notarized Caroline’s transfer to Charles.
The photograph placed Daniel hundreds of miles away.
With Eleanor.
It was an alibi.
Grandma had not preserved scandal.
She had preserved evidence.
Mother sat down slowly.
“I thought she kept it to punish me.”
“No,” I said. “You were never the center of her investigation.”
That hurt her.
Good.
Then Rebecca’s assistant rushed onto the terrace carrying a laptop.
She had located Caroline’s death certificate.
Cause: automobile accident.
Body identified by Charles Mercer.
No dental comparison.
No DNA.
No independent family witness.
Daniel stared at the screen.
“My sister could be alive.”
Rebecca nodded.
Then another document appeared.
A recent Massachusetts property-tax payment.
Paid on a small cottage owned by Caroline Sloane.
Payment submitted three weeks ago.
The exact day Grandma died.
The payer had signed one name:
C. Sloane.
May you like
Caroline might not merely be alive.
She might already know Grandma was dead.
