Chapter 15 - The Guardrail
The blue ledger changed the investigation overnight.
Victor had paid forty thousand dollars to Ridgeway Road Services, the company hired to repair the guardrail where my father crashed. The repair had been scheduled before his death but never completed.
Detective Lane did not call it murder.
Neither did I.
Not yet.
But he reopened the old accident file.
The original photographs showed something I had never noticed because I had never been allowed to see them.
The guardrail bolts on the damaged section were missing.
Not broken.
Missing.
"Could that be from the impact?" I asked.
Lane shook his head. "We need an engineer."
Diane sat in an interview room downstairs.
Ryan sat in another.
Victor had asked for a lawyer.
Charles stood beside me staring at the photographs.
"I spent nine years telling you it was raining, that David was tired, that accidents happen."
"You didn't know."
"I knew Diane lied about where she was that night."
I looked at him.
He swallowed.
"I found a toll receipt in her coat the next morning. It put her near Ridgeway. She told me she had gone to meet a friend. I wanted to believe her."
"So you did."
"Yes."
The anger came quietly.
"Everybody in this family keeps calling silence love."
He lowered his head.
"I know."
"It isn't."
"I know that now."
Monica entered holding a certified copy of the company bylaws.
"Emily, we have another problem."
"Of course we do."
She pointed to the misconduct clause.
My father's trust shares had activated voting control.
Fifty-one percent.
"You now control Bennett Development."
Charles looked at me.
"Then use it."
"For what?"
"Call an emergency board meeting. Freeze every account Diane, Ryan, and Victor touched. Protect the employees before the money disappears."
I looked at my bandaged hand.
Twenty-four hours earlier, Diane had told me to get out of her house.
May you like
Now the house was mine.
And so was the vote that could end her entire scheme.
