Chapter 6 - The Voice Mail
Ethan left the care facility with his father's SUV burned into his mind.
Rain had stopped, but the roads shone black beneath the streetlights.
David drove because Ruiz had taken the photograph as evidence and Ethan no longer trusted himself behind a wheel.
For the first twenty minutes, neither man spoke.
Then David said the sentence Ethan had been avoiding.
"A company vehicle does not prove your father was driving it."
Ethan stared through the passenger window.
"It proves the car was there."
"Yes."
"And Daniel says my mother was there."
"Yes."
"So both of my parents may have known what was happening to Ava before it happened."
David kept his eyes on the road.
"That is one possibility."
"What's another?"
"That one parent was watching the other."
Ethan turned toward him.
David continued before he could answer.
"Your father ordered the wrecked car preserved."
"Then he later hid it."
"Or hid it from Margaret."
Ethan looked away again.
He wanted to believe that.
That was exactly why he did not trust the thought.
Love made evidence dangerous because it taught the mind where it wanted to land.
He had made that mistake with Margaret for years.
He would not make it with Thomas now.
At the hospital, Ava listened without interrupting as Ethan told her what Daniel had admitted.
He did not soften Daniel's role.
He did not soften Margaret's.
He did not soften the fact that Thomas Mercer's vehicle had been photographed at the shop.
When he finished, Ava stared at the dark television screen across the room.
"Your father called me before the crash."
"You remembered that this morning."
"No."
She looked at Ethan.
"I mean the night of the crash."
His chest tightened.
"You remember the call?"
"Not all of it."
"Tell me what you do remember."
Ava closed her eyes.
"I was at the foundation dinner."
Her voice became distant.
"I had gone into the hallway because the ballroom was too loud."
Ethan said nothing.
"Your father called my cell."
"What did he say?"
Ava pressed her fingers against her temple.
"He asked whether Margaret had spoken to me."
"About what?"
"I don't remember."
"Did he sound angry?"
"Scared."
Ethan blinked.
Thomas Mercer had not been a man people described as scared.
He had built companies through recessions, lawsuits, strikes, and hostile takeovers.
At his worst, he had been arrogant.
At his best, he had been unshakable.
"What else?"
Ava's brow tightened.
"He told me not to go home."
Ethan's breath stopped.
"Are you sure?"
Ava opened her eyes.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
Frustration flashed across her face.
"I remember saying your name."
"Mine?"
"I think I asked if you knew."
"Knew what?"
"I don't know."
She hit the blanket once with the side of her fist.
"I hate this."
Ethan moved closer but did not touch her.
"Then stop for now."
"No."
"Ava."
"No."
Her eyes were fierce now.
"For four years everyone told me not to push my memory."
"Because you were recovering from a traumatic brain injury."
"And because it was convenient."
Ethan had no answer to that.
A nurse entered to check Ava's blood pressure and asked the visitors to give her five quiet minutes.
Ethan stepped into the hallway.
Lena was there with two paper cups of coffee.
She handed one to him.
"You look terrible."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
For the first time all day, something almost normal passed between them.
Then Lena's expression changed.
"I remembered something."
Ethan stopped lifting the cup.
"About Margaret?"
"About your father."
"You never met my father."
"No."
Lena pulled out her phone.
"But I cleaned out the old desk in the upstairs library when Mrs. Mercer told me to prepare the room for new furniture."
Ethan frowned.
"That desk belonged to Dad."
"I know now."
"What did you find?"
"An old phone."
His heart jumped.
"Where is it?"
"I gave it to Mrs. Mercer."
Ethan's hope collapsed.
"She told me it was broken and asked me to throw away the charger."
"When?"
"About five months ago."
"Why didn't she throw away the phone too?"
Lena shook her head.
"I don't know."
Ethan immediately called David.
Within an hour, Ruiz had added the old phone to the search request covering Margaret's townhouse and personal storage unit.
Margaret's attorney objected.
A judge approved the expanded warrant shortly before midnight.
The phone was not found in the townhouse.
It was not found in the storage unit.
But officers found the empty box it had originally come in.
Inside the box was a handwritten note in Thomas Mercer's handwriting.
OLD LINE - KEEP ACTIVE.
David recognized the number printed beneath it.
"That was your father's private line," he told Ethan.
"I thought it was canceled after he died."
"It was."
"Can we get the carrier records?"
"Maybe metadata. Not content."
Ethan stared at the number.
"What about backups?"
David looked at him.
"If he used cloud voicemail, there could be an archive."
The next six hours became a bureaucratic maze of account recovery, probate authority, carrier verification, and old passwords.
Thomas had died eighteen months after Ava's crash.
Ethan had never closed several of his digital accounts because doing so had felt too final.
For the first time, that grief-created delay became useful.
At three fourteen in the morning, an account technician located an archived voicemail folder associated with Thomas's private number.
There were twenty-seven saved messages.
Most were ordinary.
An assistant asking about a meeting.
A contractor discussing a lake house repair.
Ethan calling from an airport.
Margaret reminding him about dinner.
Then David found one dated the night of Ava's crash.
It was not a message left for Thomas.
It was a copy of an outgoing voice message that Thomas had deliberately saved.
Ethan's hands trembled as he pressed play.
His father's voice filled the hospital consultation room.
"Ava, it's Thomas."
A pause followed.
Thomas sounded out of breath.
"Do not go home."
Ethan looked at Ava.
She covered her mouth.
The message continued.
"Do not speak to Margaret until you speak to me."
A longer pause.
"I know what she showed you, and it is not what you think."
Ethan's eyes moved toward David.
The photograph Daniel had seen flashed through his mind.
Ava with an unknown man.
Thomas's voice became sharper.
"Meet me at the Easton parking garage."
There was a rustle, as if he had turned suddenly.
"And Ava, listen to me."
His father lowered his voice.
"Margaret knows you found the ledger."
The message ended.
Nobody spoke.
Ava stared at the phone.
"Ledger?"
Ethan's pulse pounded in his throat.
"Do you remember a ledger?"
She shook her head.
David replayed the message.
Then he looked at Ethan.
"We need to know what she found."
Ethan was already thinking of his father's office.
Thomas had kept financial records in three places.
Corporate accounting.
His private home office.
And a locked archive room at Mercer Foundation headquarters.
Margaret had controlled the foundation after his death.
Ethan stood.
"The old foundation archive."
David understood immediately.
"If the ledger still exists, she has had years to remove it."
Ava's voice came from the bed.
"Maybe she couldn't find it."
They looked at her.
She was staring at nothing now.
Her face had gone pale.
"I remember a book."
Ethan moved closer.
"What book?"
"Blue leather."
Ava's eyes filled with tears of effort.
"Your father gave it to me in the parking garage."
"Before the crash?"
"Yes."
Her breathing quickened.
"He told me not to let Margaret see it."
Ethan's skin went cold.
"Where did you put it?"
Ava looked at him.
"In my car."
The same car Thomas had ordered preserved.
The same car that had disappeared from corporate storage.
The same car Margaret and Raymond Hale had visited after the crash.
Whatever Ava had discovered before the accident might still have been inside it when they arrived.
May you like
Unless someone else reached it first.
