Chapter 15 - Behind the Wine Wall
Police would not let us simply walk into the penthouse and start opening walls.
I was done doing anything the Carter way.
Officer Patel coordinated with investigators already handling the assault complaint and the emerging financial evidence. By evening, the right paperwork was in motion and the penthouse was secured.
Evelyn waited in the hallway while investigators searched.
I stayed with her.
She kept staring at the front door.
"I lived there twenty-six years," she said. "I never knew there was space behind the wine wall."
"Harold counted on people not asking."
A detective called us inside later.
A narrow panel had been removed behind the temperature-control cabinet.
Inside was a steel safe.
The master ledger was there.
So were envelopes of signed blank checks, copied employee files, and old photographs.
One photograph showed my father entering the Carter Meridian building nine years earlier.
Another showed him leaving.
A third showed Harold standing beside his car.
I turned it over.
T.B. - FINAL WARNING.
"What warning?"
Nobody answered.
Then Officer Patel found a digital recorder.
Its battery was dead.
They bagged it.
Evelyn looked at me.
"Claire, I never knew he met Harold that day."
I believed her.
Maybe because fear looked different from deceit once you had seen both up close.
The detective opened the master ledger.
Names filled page after page.
Payments.
Claim numbers.
Amounts removed.
Then a section marked PRESSURE POINTS.
Beside Thomas Bennett's name were three entries.
DAUGHTER - COMPLIANCE CAREER.
MORTGAGE.
CARDIAC HISTORY.
I stared at the last line.
My father had died from a heart attack.
A natural death, his doctor had said.
But Harold had known about his condition.
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And under CARDIAC HISTORY someone had written:
USE FEAR, NOT FORCE.
