Chapter 7 - THE DAUGHTER IN THE OLD PHOTOGRAPH
Martin showed me an earlier version of the estate plan, prepared four years before Dad's death.
The beneficiary was still me.
The difference concerned a separate educational fund Dad had created for the children of his longtime employees.
Ethan had been named as a possible successor administrator if I became unable to serve.
Dad removed that provision after discovering suspicious transactions.
He also left a sealed packet that Martin had been instructed to open only after specific conditions were met.
"What conditions?" I asked.
"The identification of the person who accessed George's medical records," Martin said.
His care in following Dad's instructions frustrated me, but I understood the reason.
It prevented any of us from shaping the evidence around a desired result.
That evening, I went through the photographs recovered from Daniel's locker.
One showed Dad at the repair shop's fiftieth-anniversary party.
A young woman stood behind him, holding a child on her hip.
I recognized the woman as Elena Ruiz, a bookkeeper who had worked for him years earlier.
I had not seen her since she moved away.
On the back, Dad had written, "Elena, Sofia, and a promise I intend to keep."
I asked Martin whether Dad had any family I did not know about.
"Not that he ever told me," he answered.
"But Elena was helping him audit the missing funds."
Nora located Elena in a town two hours away.
When we met, she wept at the sight of Dad's handwriting.
"He called me when he found the transfers," she said.
"I told him I'd come back to help."
Elena had retained copies of the garage payroll ledger.
She showed us that wages for several former employees had been redirected to a new account.
Someone had forged small authorizations over years, keeping individual amounts low enough to escape casual notice.
"Who had access?" I asked.
"Your father, me, and the accountant Ethan recommended," Elena said.
I knew the accountant.
He had eaten at our kitchen table.
His name was Warren Pike.
When Nora searched his firm, she found a troubling announcement.
Warren had abruptly closed his office three days after Dad's funeral.
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And no one knew where he had gone.
