CHAPTER 11 — THE BOATHOUSE
Police entered within seconds.
Isabella followed before anyone could stop her.
Damian was on the floor beside an overturned table.
He had been struck but remained conscious.
Adrian Locke was alive.
William Hart had been wounded in the shoulder.
Evelyn was gone.
A trapdoor beneath the silver case opened into an underground passage leading toward the shoreline.
Marcus pursued her while Detective Rowan secured the building.
Adrian looked at Isabella with terror in his eyes.
“She will not stop.”
“You helped her.”
“I thought it was only money.”
“You destroyed my marriage.”
“Damian chose what he became.”
“And you gave him the tools.”
Adrian had no answer.
William Hart asked for an attorney.
Then he began losing consciousness.
Before paramedics carried him away, he grabbed Isabella’s wrist.
“Your mother knew she was dying.”
Isabella leaned closer.
“What are you saying?”
“She recorded more than one message.”
“Where are they?”
William’s eyes moved toward the silver case.
“The necklace.”
Evelyn’s emerald necklace was not merely a family heirloom.
The centerpiece contained a hidden compartment.
Inside was a tiny metal cylinder.
Claire opened it at headquarters.
A strip of microfilm was concealed inside.
It contained a handwritten letter from Eleanor.
Isabella recognized her mother’s writing immediately.
The letter explained that Eleanor had discovered William, Richard, and Evelyn stealing from the trust.
She had gathered evidence.
But before she could expose them, she became ill.
Eleanor believed someone had changed her medication.
She placed copies of the evidence inside three separate locations.
One was the hidden room in the Cross mansion.
One was the necklace.
The third was never identified.
At the bottom of the letter, Eleanor had written:
Alexander made a terrible mistake, but he did not betray me. Protect him from the truth he blames himself for.
Isabella’s eyes filled with tears.
Her father had not caused Eleanor’s death.
But for thirty years, he had believed his unauthorized trust change had given Evelyn the opportunity to act.
He had carried the guilt alone.
Marcus returned before dawn.
He had lost Evelyn near the river.
But investigators found her escape vehicle.
Inside the trunk was a passport, cash, and a deed to an abandoned Cross property in Vermont.
There was also a photograph of Isabella as a baby.
On the back, Evelyn had written:
The final evidence dies where Eleanor began.
Alexander recognized the property.
It was the hospital where Eleanor had worked before marrying him.
The building had been closed for twenty-five years.
Isabella looked again at the message.
May you like
Evelyn was not running away.
She was going back to destroy the last secret Eleanor had left behind.
