Chapter 4 - My Mother’s Testimony
St. Catherine’s moved my mother to a secured floor under an assumed name.
Officer Reyes would not tell me which name they used, and for once, I was grateful to be excluded from information. The fewer people who knew where Margaret Mercer was, the better.
I saw her that afternoon.
The woman in the hospital bed looked twenty years older than the mother I had hugged a month earlier.
Her cheeks had hollowed. Purple bruises marked the insides of both arms. Her silver hair lay in thin, tangled strands against the pillow. A monitor tracked her heartbeat while clear fluid moved through an IV line.
When I entered, her eyes were closed.
“Mom?”
Her eyelids lifted slowly.
For several seconds she studied me as though trying to decide whether I was real.
“Claire?”
I crossed the room.
“Yes.”
“You came back.”
“I never left.”
Her expression twisted.
“That’s what he told me.”
I pulled a chair beside the bed.
“Who?”
But we both knew.
“Walter said you knew I was sick. He said you agreed I needed to stay upstairs until the papers were finished.”
“What papers?”
Her gaze moved toward the door.
A police officer stood outside. A camera had been positioned above the hallway. Officer Reyes had checked the bathroom, closet and ceiling vents before allowing me inside.
“He listens,” Margaret whispered.
“Not here.”
“He always listens.”
I took her hand carefully.
“Mom, I need you to tell me what happened.”
She looked at the bandage wrapped around my wrist. I had not realized I had been injured until a nurse cleaned the place where my father’s belt buckle had grazed me.
“Lily,” Margaret said.
“She survived surgery.”
My mother began to cry.
“Is she awake?”
“Not right now. The doctors are keeping her asleep so her brain can heal.”
“I tried to make her leave.”
“She came because she heard you.”
“I told her not to tell Walter.”
“She’s three years old.”
“I know.”
The grief in my mother’s face was unbearable.
“What is the blue book?” I asked gently.
Margaret closed her eyes.
“It was your brother’s name for it.”
My heartbeat changed.
“Noah?”
My older brother had been dead for seventeen years.
The official story was simple. He had driven too fast on a mountain road after drinking at a college reunion. His car crossed the center line, struck a barrier and fell into a ravine.
My father had identified the body.
The coffin had remained closed.
“Noah discovered Walter was moving money through subcontractors,” Margaret said. “Fake companies. Inflated invoices. He kept records.”
“In a blue book?”
“No. On a blue computer drive. Noah called it the blue book because he was afraid to use the word ledger in messages.”
I struggled to keep my voice steady.
“What did the records show?”
“Bribes. Payments to inspectors. Judges. Police officers. Men who approved land purchases before families knew their property was being condemned.”
My father had built an empire through government contracts.
I had prosecuted public corruption cases while eating Sunday dinner with a man who apparently maintained public officials on his payroll.
“Did Noah confront him?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Walter told him he would destroy the family. Noah said the family was already destroyed.”
She turned her face toward the window.
“The next morning, he left for the reunion. He never arrived.”
I stopped breathing.
“The police said he had been drinking.”
“He had not touched alcohol in eight months.”
“How do you know?”
“He was taking medication that made him violently ill if he drank. I told the detective. Walter said I was confused.”
“Was there an autopsy?”
“Walter refused one.”
I remembered the funeral.
My father standing beside the closed coffin, one hand on my shoulder.
Some questions only cause more pain, Claire.
I had mistaken control for strength because I was twenty-one years old and desperate to believe at least one parent knew how to survive grief.
“Are you saying Walter killed Noah?”
“I’m saying Noah knew something on Friday and was dead on Saturday.”
“Where is the drive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why did Walter lock you upstairs?”
“Because I found Noah’s key.”
She nodded toward the drawer beside her bed.
The police had placed her few recovered belongings inside a clear plastic property bag. A wedding ring. A torn handkerchief. A small silver key.
I had seen that key before.
My mother wore it on a chain when I was a child. She said it opened a music box that had belonged to her grandmother.
“What does it open?” I asked.
“A bank box under my maiden name.”
“Which bank?”
“First Commonwealth downtown.”
My prosecutorial mind began arranging the sequence.
If the key opened a safe-deposit box and the drive was inside, we would need access records, identification and possibly a warrant. Walter’s attorneys would claim marital property. The bank might freeze the box the moment they heard about the investigation.
“We need to tell Reyes.”
“No.”
“Mom—”
“Walter has people inside the police department.”
“Officer Reyes is not one of them.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I trust her.”
“I trusted your father.”
The warning settled between us.
My mother’s fingers tightened around mine.
“Walter knows I found the key. He searched my room. He took my phone. When I refused to tell him where the box was, he started giving me pills.”
“Who prescribed them?”
“Dr. Harlan.”
I recognized the name. Victor Harlan had served as our family physician for more than two decades. He attended my wedding and spoke at charity dinners sponsored by Mercer Development.
“Did he examine you?”
“He came to the house twice. He never spoke to me alone.”
“Did you sign anything?”
“Walter brought papers after the medication. He guided my hand.”
“What papers?”
“I don’t know. Trust documents. Company shares. Maybe the house.”
The door opened.
James stepped inside carrying two coffees. When he saw Margaret awake, he stopped.
“Margaret.”
She stared at him.
“You work for Walter.”
“I did.”
“You moved his money.”
James’s face changed.
I turned toward him.
“What does she mean?”
“I’m the company’s finance director. Moving money is part of my job.”
“No,” Margaret said. “The Harbor accounts.”
James placed the coffees on the counter.
“What Harbor accounts?”
“You know.”
“I’ve seen holding companies with Harbor in the names. They were real-estate vehicles.”
“They were Noah’s companies first.”
James looked at me.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Why would my father use Noah’s companies?”
“I don’t know.”
My mother’s voice sharpened unexpectedly.
“Because dead men don’t ask questions.”
A nurse appeared at the doorway and warned that Margaret needed rest. Her blood pressure had risen dangerously.
I stood.
“We’ll come back.”
Margaret caught my sleeve.
“Claire, do not go to the bank.”
“Why?”
“Walter will expect it.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Find the photograph.”
“What photograph?”
“The last picture of you and Noah.”
I remembered it immediately.
Noah and me standing on the dock at our family’s lake house. He was twenty-five, sunburned and laughing. I was wearing a university sweatshirt despite the summer heat.
The photograph had sat on my mother’s dresser for years.
“Walter took everything from my room,” she whispered. “But he never understood why that picture mattered.”
“What am I looking for?”
“Behind Noah.”
The nurse insisted we leave.
In the hallway, James followed me toward the elevator.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m thinking we need to go to the lake house.”
“Your father owns it.”
“He transferred it to a Mercer Development subsidiary five years ago.”
“So we need police.”
“If we involve the department before we know what we’re looking for, the information could reach whoever helped Walter.”
“You just told Margaret you trusted Reyes.”
“I trust Reyes. I do not trust every person who can read her reports.”
The elevator doors opened.
James did not move.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
The tone of his voice stopped me.
“What?”
“Six months ago, I found irregular payments in three Harbor accounts.”
My body went cold.
“You told me you knew nothing about them.”
“I said I didn’t know they belonged to Noah.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“Claire—”
“Did you report the payments?”
“No.”
“Did you ask Walter?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He said the accounts funded confidential property acquisitions. He told me asking further questions would violate board policy.”
“You believed him?”
“I wanted to.”
There it was.
Not ignorance.
Choice.
“What did you do?”
“I copied some of the files.”
“Where are they?”
“In a secure drive at our house.”
“Who knows?”
“No one.”
An alarm sounded from the secured floor behind us.
A nurse ran past.
Then another.
Officer Reyes appeared at the opposite end of the hallway with her hand near her weapon.
“What happened?” I demanded.
She pointed toward Margaret’s room.
Smoke poured from the ceiling vent.
The fire alarm continued screaming as staff began moving patients.
James grabbed my arm.
Through the confusion, I saw a man in hospital scrubs step through a service door at the far end of the corridor.
He looked back once.
I recognized him.
May you like
Dr. Victor Harlan.
Then he disappeared into the stairwell.
