Chapter 5 - My Sister's Version
I asked Mara to meet me at the diner where Naomi and I had talked.
She arrived alone, wearing the same ivory coat I'd seen outside the red-brick building.
Her hands shook when she removed it.
“You followed us,” she said.
“You and my husband have been lying to me.”
“Yes.”
The answer was so direct that I forgot what I intended to say next.
Mara slid a visitor badge across the table.
The red-brick building belonged to a private forensic accounting firm named Bellwether Investigations.
Eliam had been meeting with an investigator there.
“So you're investigating him together?” I asked.
Mara winced.
“No. He's trying to stop the investigation.”
She explained that our father had discovered irregularities in his small manufacturing business before his fall.
Eliam, who once handled its bookkeeping as a favor, had moved payments through a shell vendor.
Mara had suspected it and confronted him.
He told me she was trying to pressure Dad for money.
I believed him, and Mara stopped calling.
“Why were you holding his hand?” I demanded.
“He grabbed mine because I told him I was going to tell you.”
“And my letter?”
“Your envelope had been copied.”
Mara pushed the original across the table.
It was opened neatly along the edge.
My writing was still on the front.
“He brought it to prove you had already started asking questions.”
“Why tell you that?”
“Because he wants me to sign a statement saying Dad imagined the missing funds.”
I looked at her.
“Why would you?”
“He has something he thinks will force me.”
She drew out a photograph of Dad's workshop.
In the foreground stood a young man I recognized from family holidays years earlier.
Mara's former fiancé, Luke.
Luke had disappeared after a business dispute with Dad.
Eliam claimed Luke helped arrange the fraudulent transfers.
“Mara, did he?”
Her eyes filled, but she remained steady.
“I don't know. He died six weeks ago.”
Then she placed a small sealed evidence bag between us.
Inside was Luke's old key fob.
May you like
On its tag, someone had written my name.
