Chapter 6 - The Missing Ledger
Claire's house looked almost untouched.
Almost.
A drawer was half an inch open.
A picture frame tilted.
One kitchen cabinet didn't close completely.
To anyone else, it might have looked normal.
To Claire, it looked violated.
She stood in the doorway while police photographed the rooms.
"They knew what they were looking for," Daniel said.
Elise walked into the kitchen.
The recipe book had been left on the counter earlier.
Now it lay open.
Page forty-seven.
Margaret Mercer's apple pie.
Elise stared.
"Did you leave it like this?"
Claire shook her head.
Daniel moved closer.
The recipe had several handwritten numbers in the margins.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Daniel had seen those marks before but assumed they were measurements.
Elise frowned.
"Those aren't cooking notes."
Claire looked closer.
"Mom wrote weird reminders everywhere."
"Maybe."
Elise turned several pages.
More numbers.
The rosemary beef recipe contained:
8.
9.
10.
11.
Daniel said, "Could be dates."
"No," Elise replied. "They're all under twenty-six."
Claire understood.
"Letters."
They tried converting numbers to the alphabet.
3-17-11-4-9 became C-Q-K-D-I.
Nonsense.
Elise examined the handwriting.
"What if they aren't read in order?"
Daniel smiled faintly.
"You like puzzles?"
"My mother raised me without cable."
Claire looked offended.
"We had cable."
"We had three channels."
"Still cable."
Elise ignored her.
Margaret had placed tiny dots beside some ingredients.
Others had underlines.
The numbers next to dotted ingredients formed:
H-A-W-T-H-O-R-N-E.
Daniel stared.
"Hawthorne."
Claire's hands trembled.
"My mother knew."
They spent hours decoding more pages.
The recipe book wasn't simply a cookbook.
Margaret had used recipes to record transactions.
Ingredient initials corresponded to companies.
Cooking temperatures represented dates.
Margin numbers created names.
It was brilliant because nobody would suspect it.
A recipe for peach cobbler contained references to bank accounts.
Chicken soup hid the initials of three politicians.
And near the back they found something more important.
L-17.
Repeated four times.
Daniel called Rebecca.
"Can L-17 mean anything in old Mercer records?"
She searched.
"Give me a minute."
Then:
"There was a storage facility beneath the original Mercer Hotel."
"The one demolished in 2009?"
"Most of it."
"What does that mean?"
"The basement archive was preserved when the property became Mercer Tower."
Daniel looked at Claire.
"Locker seventeen."
At seven the following morning they entered the basement.
Dust covered rows of old metal storage units.
Locker 17 had no obvious lock.
Only an antique brass dial.
Elise remembered the recipe.
"Temperature."
"What?"
"Grandma's apple pie."
Claire smiled suddenly.
"Three seventy-five."
Daniel entered 375.
Nothing.
"Rosemary beef?"
"Three twenty-five."
Nothing.
Elise thought.
"The first meal she taught both of you."
Claire and Daniel looked at each other.
"Chocolate cake," they said simultaneously.
"350," Claire added.
Daniel entered it.
Click.
The door opened.
Inside sat one black ledger.
Daniel reached toward it.
Claire grabbed his wrist.
"Wait."
He looked at her.
"If Mom hid this here, she was frightened."
Daniel nodded.
He put on gloves.
Inside the ledger were handwritten records dating back thirty years.
Payments.
Names.
Companies.
Hawthorne Holdings.
Victor Mercer.
Arthur Mercer.
Daniel stared at his father's signature.
"It's real."
Claire whispered, "I'm sorry."
Daniel turned the pages.
His father had been involved.
Victor hadn't lied about that.
But then Elise noticed something.
"Dates."
"What?"
"Look."
Several payments authorized under Arthur's signature were dated during a period when Arthur had been hospitalized after a heart attack.
Claire remembered.
"He couldn't sign anything then."
Daniel leaned closer.
Forgery.
Again.
Page after page.
Victor had forged Arthur's approval.
Margaret had discovered it.
And apparently she had been collecting evidence before her death.
Then they reached the final page.
One sentence had been written in Margaret's hand:
If anything happens to me, Victor knows I found out.
Claire sat down.
Daniel stopped breathing.
Margaret Mercer had supposedly died from a sudden stroke.
No investigation.
No suspicion.
Nothing.
Elise whispered, "You think Victor killed her?"
Daniel closed the ledger.
"We don't know."
Claire's face had turned gray.
"We need to go to the police."
"We will."
Daniel photographed every page.
Rebecca arranged a meeting with federal investigators.
For the first time, they had evidence substantial enough to reopen questions around Hawthorne.
They left the basement separately.
Daniel took the ledger.
Claire and Elise entered the elevator.
At floor twenty-two, the lights flickered.
The elevator stopped.
Elise looked up.
"Power outage?"
Claire's phone had no signal.
Then a voice came through the speaker.
Not the building operator.
Victor.
"You found it."
Claire froze.
"Victor?"
"I told you twenty-four years ago that some truths cost too much."
Elise moved toward the emergency button.
Nothing.
Victor continued.
"You should have listened."
The lights went out.
Claire grabbed Elise.
In complete darkness, they heard a metallic sound above them.
Then the elevator dropped.
Only three feet.
But Claire screamed.
Elise held her.
The emergency brake caught.
Victor's voice returned.
"Give Daniel the ledger, Claire."
"He already has it."
A pause.
Then Victor laughed.
"Thank you."
Claire realized what she'd done.
She had just told him exactly where the evidence was.
May you like
And Daniel was walking alone through an underground garage.
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