Chapter 3 - The Woman Who Came to Finish the Job
The officer reached the door before the woman could enter.
“Ma'am, may I help you?”
She stopped.
From my bed, I could see her through the glass.
She appeared to be in her late forties, with carefully styled blonde hair and an expensive gray coat.
“I've come to see my niece,” she replied.
Thomas slowly stood.
I didn't have an aunt.
“What's your name?” the officer asked.
“Margaret Collins.”
The woman smiled.
“My sister Evelyn called me. She said poor Mara had suffered some kind of emotional episode.”
My skin went cold.
Evelyn's younger sister.
I had met Margaret twice during my marriage.
Both times, she had barely acknowledged me.
And now she was standing outside my hospital room, carrying Evelyn's handbag.
The officer requested identification.
Margaret opened her purse.
As she searched inside, Thomas whispered:
“Don't say anything.”
I watched her through the glass.
She was too calm.
Far too calm for someone supposedly visiting a relative who had nearly drowned.
When the officer asked why she had come, she explained that Evelyn was devastated by my disappearance.
“She's been searching everywhere,” Margaret said.
“Your sister is currently wanted for questioning in connection with an attempted homicide investigation.”
Margaret blinked.
Then she laughed.
“That must be a misunderstanding.”
“Where is Evelyn Whitmore?”
“I have no idea.”
Her answer came too quickly.
The officer asked her to step into the corridor.
Margaret's smile vanished.
“I have a right to speak to my niece.”
“No, ma'am. Not without her permission.”
She looked past him.
Our eyes met.
For one brief second, I saw something ugly beneath her polished expression.
Recognition.
Then she mouthed two words.
Poor girl.
Hospital security escorted her away.
But before she disappeared, she turned toward Thomas.
“You should tell Mara to stop digging through things that don't belong to her.”
Thomas said nothing.
Only after she had gone did I realize how violently I was shaking.
“She knows,” I whispered.
Thomas nodded.
“Apparently.”
“Why would Evelyn send her?”
“To find out what you told the police. Possibly to discover whether Daniel left you anything.”
I looked toward the laptop.
“Then she knows about the evidence.”
“Not necessarily. But she suspects.”
The officer returned several minutes later.
Margaret had declined to answer further questions.
She claimed she'd received an anonymous call telling her I was hospitalized.
Security footage showed her arriving in a silver sedan, but the vehicle was registered to a corporate rental service.
“She's not being allowed back onto this floor,” the officer assured me.
I wanted that to make me feel safe.
It didn't.
At eleven thirty, Thomas finally told me something he'd been withholding.
The farmhouse was not the only property Daniel had included in his private estate instructions.
He had also established an independent trust.
The trust controlled his ownership interest in Whitmore Quarry Holdings and included specific restrictions preventing his shares from being transferred under coercion.
“Even if you'd signed Grant's agreement,” Thomas explained, “the transaction could have been challenged and blocked.”
I stared at him.
“Then they tried to kill me for something they couldn't even take?”
“They may not have understood the structure Daniel created.”
I began laughing.
It was a terrible sound.
I couldn't stop.
Grant had dragged me across wet grass, Evelyn had watched me fall into a well, and neither had bothered to find out whether murdering me would actually give them what they wanted.
“What happens to my shares if I die?” I asked.
Thomas's expression softened.
“They transfer into a charitable trust Daniel established for injured quarry workers and their families.”
I stared at him.
Daniel had always been quietly generous.
Every Christmas, he anonymously paid the heating bills of several retired quarry employees.
When a worker named Patrick lost part of his mobility after an industrial accident, Daniel personally arranged modifications to his home.
Evelyn had called it unnecessary sentimentality.
Daniel called it responsibility.
Even in death, he had found a way to protect the people his family preferred to forget.
“There's more,” Thomas said.
“Of course there is.”
“Daniel gave me instructions to hire an independent forensic accounting firm if anyone challenged your inheritance.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The morning after the funeral.”
I looked at him in disbelief.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I was waiting for the preliminary findings. And because Daniel specifically requested that you be allowed to grieve before becoming involved.”
Tears slipped down my cheeks.
For six weeks, I had believed everyone was moving forward while I remained trapped in the past.
But my husband had been planning for a future he feared he might never see.
Thomas opened another file.
It contained a list of properties owned through various Whitmore subsidiaries.
One address had been highlighted.
A warehouse beside the quarry's northern access road.
According to the accounts, it had been abandoned for seven years.
Yet the company had spent nearly two million dollars maintaining it.
“Why?” I asked.
“That's what our investigators are trying to establish.”
Thomas leaned closer.
“And Mara, the money isn't the only thing that concerns me.”
He showed me an old insurance document.
Samuel Reed, the missing safety supervisor, had filed several complaints about unauthorized nighttime activity at the quarry.
His final report referenced vehicles entering through the northern service gate after midnight.
The day after he submitted that report, he was dismissed.
Four days before Daniel died, Samuel vanished.
“Do you think he's dead?” I whispered.
“I don't know.”
A knock interrupted us.
A nurse entered carrying a small cardboard box.
“This was delivered for Mrs. Whitmore.”
Thomas stood immediately.
“From whom?”
“The reception desk said a courier left it.”
There was no return address.
Only my name.
Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, was a silver necklace.
Daniel's necklace.
The one he had been wearing when he died.
The police had returned his personal belongings weeks earlier, but that necklace had been missing.
Beneath it was a handwritten note.
HE SHOULD HAVE LEFT THE QUARRY ALONE. SO SHOULD YOU.
On the reverse side, someone had written a date.
September 19.
Four days from now.
And underneath it:
ASK THOMAS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE TRUST EXPIRES.
May you like
I looked up.
For the first time that evening, my husband's attorney appeared genuinely frightened.
