Chapter 13 - The Deadline
The court's production deadline was Monday at noon.
Victor had three days to identify the missing carton or explain where it went.
Grace believed the label CAROLINE might refer to my sister, but she would not let us build a theory around one word.
"It could be a vendor, an employee, or a label Adam invented," she said.
I wanted the certainty of a villain who confessed everything on schedule.
Instead I was learning to live inside unanswered questions.
Sunday night Daniel came to my apartment wearing the expression he had as a boy after breaking a window with a baseball.
He said Victor had asked him to carry an envelope to Adam.
"Did you?"
"I took it."
My heart sank.
"Then I opened it."
He handed me a sealed transparent evidence bag provided by his attorney.
Inside was the envelope and a brief note, which his counsel had already documented.
The note referred to relocating a carton marked C. M. before the Monday inventory.
Daniel had refused to deliver it and told his lawyer immediately.
"He said it was just old family memorabilia," Daniel whispered.
"But why would he need me to move it?"
I put a hand on his shoulder.
"You did the right thing by telling your attorney."
Grace received the information through the proper channels.
She asked that the existing preservation order be enforced, not that Daniel go searching for a box.
By Monday morning, Richard Bell notified the court that the carton was in Adam's personal possession and would be produced pending review for privilege.
The judge demanded a specific explanation rather than a vague assurance.
At 11:42 a.m., a courier delivered it to the designated examiner.
It contained photographs of my sister, letters written in her handwriting, and records connected to the adoption inquiry Mom had undertaken.
It did not contain the originals of the questioned business releases.
There was, however, a small brown envelope with Mom's name on it.
In the envelope was a receipt showing she had paid for a private investigation seven years before she died.
The investigator's report concluded that the alleged adoption could not be verified.
Caroline might have been pregnant before the crash, but the available records did not establish a live birth.
I felt an unfamiliar kind of relief mixed with sorrow.
I had feared another living person had been denied a family.
The truth was that my mother had chased a possibility and left it unresolved.
That would remain part of our family history, not a dramatic prize for Victor to use against me.
Then Grace showed me the last page of the investigator's file.
It was a billing ledger.
The person who requested a copy after my mother's death was Adam Rusk.
The request came from the same office handling Victor's internal accounting.
"Why would Adam want it?" Anna asked.
Grace looked at the date.
"The request was made two weeks before the first questionable trust release was recorded."
The timing suggested the file might have been used to map every possible beneficiary before someone tried to eliminate the trust's claims.
It did not prove whose idea that was.
But it made the purpose of the missing carton harder to dismiss.
At 4:19 p.m., Victor emailed Daniel directly.
The subject line was YOUR LAST CHANCE.
The message said he could keep his career if he signed an affidavit discrediting me by Friday.
Otherwise Victor would ask the bank to pursue the guaranty bearing Daniel's disputed signature.
Daniel stared at the screen, then called his attorney.
May you like
For the first time, he did not call his father back.
