Chapter 9 - Someone Was Inside My House
The fire started at 4:18 a.m.
By the time firefighters arrived, my office was destroyed.
So was part of accounting.
Grant stood beside the parking lot wearing jeans and a winter coat thrown over pajamas.
He looked devastated.
Too devastated.
“Oh my God,” he said when he saw me. “Claire.”
I watched him.
“Are you okay?”
“I wasn’t here.”
“I know.”
He stepped closer.
“This is getting out of control.”
“What is?”
“These accidents.”
“Fire isn’t usually an accident before sunrise in a locked building.”
His expression tightened.
“You’re accusing me?”
“No.”
“You always are.”
“I haven’t said your name.”
Celia arrived ten minutes later.
Fully dressed.
Hair styled.
Makeup on.
At 4:45 in the morning.
I noticed.
Pierce noticed too.
The fire marshal found evidence of an accelerant.
Arson.
Security cameras had stopped recording twenty minutes before the fire.
Miguel checked the system.
Someone disabled them remotely using an administrator account.
His account.
But Miguel had been asleep at home.
The login came from inside the building.
A cloned credential.
The arsonist knew our systems.
That narrowed nothing and everything.
Then firefighters found a side door propped open.
No forced entry.
Someone had access.
Grant blamed former employees.
Celia suggested vandalism.
I said nothing.
Atlas stayed home with Thomas that morning.
I didn’t want him around smoke and emergency vehicles.
At noon, Thomas called.
“Claire, somebody was outside your house.”
My stomach dropped.
“When?”
“About ten minutes ago.”
“What happened?”
“I took Atlas there because you said you’d be late.”
“Did you see them?”
“A gray sedan.”
“Driver?”
“No.”
“Did they stop?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Across the street.”
“For how long?”
“Five minutes.”
I immediately called Pierce.
Police checked neighborhood cameras.
The gray sedan had stolen plates.
It drove away before officers arrived.
That evening I stayed with Thomas.
For the first time since Atlas returned, I felt truly afraid.
Not for myself.
For everyone helping me.
Thomas.
Miguel.
Neil.
Atlas.
Grant had already taken him once.
I wouldn’t allow it again.
At midnight, I couldn’t sleep.
I sat at Thomas’s kitchen table with Mom’s notebook.
Atlas lay beneath my chair.
Thomas came in for water.
“You look like Eleanor.”
I glanced up.
“You knew my mom?”
“Not well.”
“How?”
“She bought packing materials from my brother’s shop years ago.”
I smiled.
“Small town.”
“Too small sometimes.”
He sat.
“Your mother had your expression when she was thinking.”
“What expression?”
“Like she was arguing with someone who wasn’t in the room.”
I laughed.
Then I looked back at the notebook.
“I keep thinking I should have seen it.”
“Seen what?”
“Grant.”
Thomas shook his head.
“People don’t expect betrayal from family.”
“I should have.”
“Why?”
“Because Mom did.”
“She was older.”
“She knew him better.”
“She raised him.”
That hurt in a different way.
Maybe Mom’s greatest heartbreak hadn’t been discovering Grant stole money.
Maybe it was realizing her own son had become someone she couldn’t trust.
Thomas pointed toward the notebook.
“What are you looking for?”
“The torn pages.”
“You found them.”
“Yes, but one thing doesn’t make sense.”
“What?”
Mom’s hidden letter said Grant caught her copying records.
But the torn pages contained notes from several weeks.
One entry said:
V.H. moving boxes Thursday. Celia says Grant knows.
Victor Hale.
Another:
G says C is loyal because she has as much to lose.
And another:
Safe copy with R.M. if needed.
R.M.
We didn’t know who that was.
I searched Mom’s contacts.
Robert Miller.
Supplier.
Died five years ago.
Rachel Monroe.
Former employee.
Moved away.
Raymond Myers.
Accountant.
Then I stopped.
Richard Mason.
Mom’s attorney.
I called his old firm the next morning.
Richard Mason had retired.
But he was alive.
He lived in Arizona.
When I finally reached him, he remembered me.
“Claire Holloway.”
“Yes.”
“I wondered if you would ever call.”
My entire body went still.
“What does that mean?”
“Your mother left instructions.”
“What instructions?”
“That if you contacted me asking specifically about Grant, I should release a package.”
My mouth went dry.
“You’ve had something for me for seven years?”
“I was legally instructed not to contact you.”
“Why?”
“Your mother feared that if Grant knew the package existed, he would pressure you to surrender it.”
“What is in it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never opened it?”
“No.”
“Can you send it?”
“Yes.”
“How quickly?”
“Overnight.”
The package arrived the following afternoon.
Inside was a sealed envelope.
A flash drive.
And a small notebook.
The notebook contained names.
Dates.
Amounts.
But one page immediately caught my attention.
Celia — not just accounting. Grant says they’ll leave together after control transfers.
Grant and Celia had been planning to take the company.
Together.
Seven years ago.
Then I opened the envelope.
Inside was a handwritten statement signed by my mother.
It described Grant’s theft.
His threats.
His attempt to pressure her into transferring ownership.
And one final detail I had never known.
Grant has access to my medication through Celia, who has been collecting prescriptions from the pharmacy for me. I have changed the authorization today.
My heart stopped.
Celia had access to Mom’s medication.
The same Celia who visited Mom shortly before her condition worsened.
Again, it proved nothing by itself.
But now police had reason to examine something they hadn’t before.
Pharmacy records.
Detective Pierce obtained them.
And two days later she called me.
“Claire, we found something.”
“What?”
“A prescription was collected under your mother’s name the day she entered the hospital.”
“By whom?”
“Celia.”
“For what?”
Pierce hesitated.
“A medication your mother’s physician had discontinued six weeks earlier.”
I gripped the phone.
“Did Mom take it?”
“We don’t know.”
“Was it dangerous?”
“In combination with her condition, it could have been.”
I stopped breathing.
“Are you saying Celia poisoned her?”
“No.”
Pierce’s voice was firm.
“I’m saying we now have a reason to investigate what happened to that medication.”
That distinction mattered.
I refused to turn suspicion into fact.
But then the pharmacy provided surveillance footage.
Old footage had been archived because of a prior insurance dispute.
Celia appeared at the counter.
She collected the prescription.
Twenty minutes later, another camera outside the store showed her entering Grant’s car.
Grant had lied.
He said he barely knew Celia outside work back then.
May you like
Now we had video of them together on the day Mom collapsed.
And when police showed Grant the footage, he finally stopped smiling.
