Chapter 6 - The Other Key
Blair forwarded the anonymous message to Ruiz and Camille.
She refused the impulse to answer.
The sender wanted her frightened, reactive, and isolated.
Instead, she began reconstructing the timeline.
Her father's portrait had hung on Corinne's wall for years.
The tiny brass key behind it was one of several ways to open the cedar chest.
Corinne still held the spare.
Nolan had stolen an object that might help him open the chest, but his message suggested someone else was involved.
At 8:15 a.m., Ruiz called with a new piece of evidence.
A nearby doorbell camera showed Nolan arriving at Corinne's house carrying a long object wrapped in a blanket.
The footage was distant, but the shape resembled the fireplace tool.
A second person sat in the passenger seat.
“Can you identify them?” Blair asked.
“Not yet.”
Blair replayed her husband's recent excuses.
Business dinners.
Late meetings.
Errands requiring him to drive across Fairfax County after midnight.
She had been tired and trusting.
Now those details formed a different pattern.
Camille insisted Blair avoid turning suspicion into accusation without proof.
That restraint became harder when Nolan's attorney filed papers portraying Corinne as a confused, violent woman who had fabricated her injuries.
The petition also described Blair as emotionally compromised by military service.
Blair read those words without speaking.
Then she set the pages down.
“They're going to use my career against me.”
“They'll try,” Camille said.
“They aren't entitled to succeed.”
An investigator hired by Camille searched public corporate records.
He found a newly formed company called Cedar Vale Holdings.
Its registered agent was Diane Mercer.
Its first planned acquisition was a property matching Corinne's address.
The paperwork included a closing date ten days away.
“That's why Nolan needed the signature now,” Blair said.
“Possibly,” Camille replied.
“Let's find out who the buyer really is.”
That afternoon, Blair visited Corinne at a short-term recovery apartment arranged by a trusted friend.
Her mother seemed smaller in the unfamiliar room.
“I never wanted you to lose your marriage because of me,” she said.
Blair knelt beside her chair.
“Mom, you didn't cause this.”
“I kept thinking I should have signed so he'd leave.”
“He came with a plan.”
Corinne looked toward the window.
“Your father thought Nolan stole something long before he died.”
“What?”
“Money meant for the veterans' scholarship fund.”
Blair remembered Nolan's annual charity speeches, his photographs with donors, his cheerful promises about helping military families.
May you like
For the first time, she wondered how many of those promises had been real.
