Chapter 2 - The Signature of a Dead Man
The morning after court, I watched Ethan build a miniature city on the living-room rug while Claire explained why a dead man's signature had appeared on a corporate payment order.
The document did not prove who forged it.
It proved something even more immediate: someone with high-level access had instructed the treasury department to treat the transaction as routine.
The money had gone to a Delaware company called Northline Advisory.
Its listed manager was a woman named Valerie Cross.
I had never heard that name.
Claire had.
"Valerie worked for Adrian's first attorney," she said.
"She left the firm just before your father's last hospitalization."
I remembered Adrian visiting Dad in the hospital, carrying lilies that Dad hated.
At the time, I had mistaken the visit for kindness.
Ethan looked up from the rug.
"Grandpa said not to let Dad keep the blue book."
I went still.
"What blue book?"
He arranged two blocks so their edges matched.
"The one with the silver moon on the front."
Dad's private ledger had been bound in blue leather, stamped with a tiny silver crescent.
I had searched his study for it after the funeral and found only an empty space on the shelf.
Claire crouched beside Ethan.
"Do you remember where you saw it?"
"At Grandpa's house. Dad carried it into the garage."
He said it without drama, as if describing a misplaced umbrella.
I thanked him and suggested we finish his city later.
I would not turn my son's remarkable memory into an investigation service.
That afternoon I met the forensic accountant, Jonah Mercer, in a conference room with no windows.
He showed me a pattern, not a conclusion.
Small vendor payments had accumulated for years, then suddenly became larger around the time Dad grew sick.
Adrian had authorized some of them.
Others were approved with credentials assigned to executives who had already resigned.
"We need underlying records," Jonah said.
"And we need to preserve them before anyone panics."
My phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number.
It contained a photograph of Dad's old blue book on a wooden table.
Below it were six words.
"Withdraw the inquiry or lose this."
The photo showed the silver crescent.
It also showed, half-covered by the book, a familiar child's drawing.
A yellow house beneath a crooked orange sun.
Ethan had made that drawing for his grandfather.
Which meant the person who sent the photograph had entered Dad's private study.
Or wanted me to believe they had.
I sent Claire the image without replying.
Ten minutes later our security company called.
May you like
Someone had used an old family access code to enter Dad's vacant Greenwich property at 2:13 that morning.
The code had belonged to Adrian's mother.
