Chapter 7 - MY UNCLE'S HOUSE
Thomas Blackwell lived on thirty acres north of Lake Forest in a stone house designed to look older than the state of Illinois.
He had no children.
For most of my life, that had meant I was treated as his son.
When my father died, Thomas taught me how to negotiate contracts, how to read a room, and how to never let anyone know the number that would make me walk away.
He also taught me that betrayal usually came from people who knew exactly where you kept the keys.
I wondered whether he had been warning me or describing himself.
Evelyn did not want me to go.
"We have a suspicious payment description, not proof of murder."
"I didn't say murder."
"You didn't have to."
"Celeste's car goes through a guardrail two days after someone pays a shell account connected to my uncle almost half a million dollars for vehicle resolution."
"It could mean fleet disposal."
"Do you believe that?"
Evelyn looked away.
"No."
"Neither do I."
Samuel wanted time to decrypt the remaining files.
Marcus wanted a full security team.
June surprised everyone by saying nothing.
When I asked why, she looked at me with tired eyes.
"Because you're going anyway."
"Probably."
"Then at least don't go angry."
I almost laughed.
"That's your advice?"
"My mother says angry people hear what they expect instead of what is said."
"Your mother should run my board."
"She'd fire all of you."
For the first time in twenty-four hours, I smiled.
I went to Thomas's house with Marcus and one driver.
No convoy.
No lawyers.
No warning.
Thomas was in his greenhouse trimming roses.
He was seventy-one, broad-shouldered despite his age, with white hair and the same dark eyes my father had.
He looked up when I entered.
"You missed lunch."
"I wasn't hungry."
"That's a first."
He clipped a dead bloom and dropped it into a basket.
"I heard about the headquarters fire."
"Everyone heard about it."
"Victor says it was electrical."
"Victor says many things."
Thomas's hand paused.
Only for a second.
"Trouble between you two?"
"Did you know Celeste was investigating Domestic Services before she died?"
The shears remained still.
Thomas looked at me.
"No."
"You're lying."
His eyes hardened.
"Don't come into my home and call me a liar without evidence."
I placed a copy of the NORTHSTAR 9 spreadsheet on the worktable.
Thomas did not touch it.
"Where did you get this?"
"Does it matter?"
"It matters if someone is fabricating records to turn you against your family."
"Why is your name on a shell transfer?"
"My name appears on hundreds of historical entities."
"Vehicle resolution."
His gaze moved to the note field.
I watched his face.
Nothing.
Too much nothing.
"What did that money buy?"
"I don't know."
"Four hundred eighty thousand dollars."
"That number meant more to me thirty years ago than it does now."
"It meant something to the person who received it."
Thomas put down the shears.
"You think I killed Celeste."
There it was.
I had not said the word.
He had.
"Did you?"
Marcus shifted behind me.
Thomas looked wounded.
Not angry.
Wounded.
It was almost convincing.
"I loved her."
"Did you?"
"More than she sometimes deserved."
My entire body went cold.
"What does that mean?"
Thomas turned away and walked toward the greenhouse windows.
"Celeste never understood the price of what this family built."
"Explain the price."
"She believed every problem could be solved by exposing it to daylight."
"Most honest people do."
"Honest people are often buried by practical ones."
I stepped closer.
"Did you bury her?"
He turned.
"No."
The answer was immediate.
"Then what did you do?"
Thomas looked past me toward Marcus.
"Ask your guard to leave."
"No."
"Then we are finished."
"We're finished when I say we are."
Thomas smiled sadly.
"There he is."
"Who?"
"Your father."
I hated when he used that tactic.
"Don't."
"He also believed control was the same as strength."
"And you taught me otherwise?"
"I tried."
"Then answer me."
Thomas removed his gardening gloves.
"Celeste came to me one month before she died."
My throat tightened.
"About payroll?"
"About Victor."
"What did she say?"
"She believed Victor was moving money through employee accounts and shell vendors."
"And you didn't tell me."
"She asked me not to."
"Why?"
"Because she knew you would confront him too early."
It was almost exactly what the recording had said.
"What did you do?"
"I investigated."
"Northstar?"
Thomas's face changed.
"You don't understand Northstar."
"Then help me."
"Northstar was not a theft vehicle."
"What was it?"
"A containment fund."
"For what?"
"Problems that could not appear on corporate books."
I laughed once without humor.
"That could mean anything."
"It was designed to protect the company from exposure."
"By stealing wages?"
"No."
"Money from underpaid employees went into Northstar."
Thomas frowned.
For the first time, his confusion looked genuine.
"That was never authorized."
"Who authorized Northstar payments?"
He did not answer.
"You?"
"Sometimes."
"Victor?"
"Sometimes."
"Who else?"
Thomas walked to a cabinet and poured water into a glass.
"Celeste found someone had piggybacked on Northstar's routing."
"Who?"
"She never proved it."
"But she suspected someone."
Thomas drank slowly.
"Yes."
"Who?"
Before he could answer, glass exploded behind him.
A bullet punched through the greenhouse window.
Marcus hit me from the side.
We crashed behind a stone planting bench.
A second shot shattered a clay pot.
Thomas dropped to the floor.
Marcus drew his weapon and shouted into his radio.
"Shooter east tree line."
I crawled toward Thomas.
"Are you hit?"
He looked at his sleeve.
Blood darkened the fabric near his shoulder.
"Grazed."
Another shot struck the cabinet.
The greenhouse lights burst.
Marcus fired toward movement beyond the trees.
An engine roared in the distance.
Then silence.
Security vehicles raced across the property.
Thomas pressed a cloth to his arm.
"You see?"
"See what?"
"Someone wants you looking at me."
"Maybe they want you dead."
"Same result if I die before I tell you the name."
I stared at him.
"Then tell me now."
Thomas looked at Marcus.
Then at the shattered glass.
"Celeste thought the payroll theft was being protected by someone inside your legal department."
I felt my stomach drop.
"Who?"
Thomas whispered the name.
"Evelyn Shaw."
Thomas's greenhouse had always been one of the few places where he seemed gentle.
As a child, I watched him graft rose stems with hands that later signed contracts capable of bankrupting entire families.
He taught me that pressure had to be precise.
Too little and nothing changed.
Too much and the stem died.
Standing among shattered glass after the shooting, I realized he had applied the same philosophy to people.
"Did you ever threaten employees to protect Northstar?" I asked while Marcus checked the grounds.
Thomas pressed gauze to his shoulder.
"Not directly."
"That answer means yes."
"It means I gave instructions and did not always ask how they were carried out."
"That's worse."
"Sometimes."
"Always."
Thomas looked at me.
"Do you really believe you never benefited from not asking?"
I hated the question.
"This is not about me."
"It is exactly about you."
He pointed toward the house.
"You inherited an empire built by people who considered curiosity expensive."
"You made sure I learned the same lesson."
"I taught you survival."
"You taught me not to look down."
Thomas's face hardened.
"And now a housekeeper has made you a revolutionary?"
The contempt in his tone felt familiar.
Victor had used almost the same idea.
You built too much to burn it over a maid.
"Her name is June."
Thomas looked away.
"I know."
"Do you?"
"I asked for her file this morning."
I stepped closer.
"Why?"
"Because I wanted to know who had caused you to start tearing open old accounts."
"That is exactly the problem."
"What?"
"You needed a file before you could imagine her as a person."
For once, Thomas had no answer.
Then the first shot came through the glass.
After the greenhouse shooting, Thomas ordered his staff to clean the broken glass immediately.
I stopped them.
"Leave it."
Thomas looked at me.
"Why?"
"Evidence."
He almost smiled.
"You finally learned something."
"From watching you hide too much."
The smile disappeared.
For once, the mess stayed visible until investigators documented it.
That became a small symbol of everything changing.
Thomas's staff later found a second bullet lodged in the greenhouse frame.
It had passed inches from the chair where Thomas usually drank tea at that hour.
The shooter knew his routine.
Thomas had spent decades creating files on other people's habits.
Now his own habits had become targeting information.
There was a symmetry to it I refused to call justice.
Victimhood did not erase what he had done, and guilt did not make attempted murder acceptable.
May you like
Both truths could exist at once.
