Chapter 2 - THE SIGNATURE
Nobody moved.
Marcus lifted the death certificate by one corner. “Caroline Mercer was declared dead forty-eight hours after the estate fire. The remains used for identification were never tested against family DNA.”
My father stared at the page. “That can’t be right.”
“It is.”
Juliette found her voice. “This is insane. She appears at my wedding looking like this, and suddenly we are supposed to trust a disgraced detective?”
Marcus smiled without humor. “I expected that.”
He pulled out a second folder.
Inside was a St. Anne’s photograph of me unconscious, hair shaved near a head wound. The monitor showed the date.
Six days after my funeral.
Grant read it twice.
“Juliette,” he said quietly, “did you know about this?”
“No.”
Marcus slid another page across the table. “St. Anne’s contacted Mercer family counsel three times after the patient identified herself as Caroline. Each call was logged.”
Dad turned toward his longtime attorney, Edwin Shaw, seated near the front. Edwin looked sick.
“I never got those calls,” Dad said.
Edwin lowered his eyes.
“Then who did?” I asked.
Marcus pointed to a handwritten routing note.
J. MERCER — HANDLE DIRECTLY.
The ballroom seemed to shrink.
Juliette shook her head. “Anyone could have written that.”
“True,” Marcus said. “So I brought the invoice.”
The next document came from a law firm I had never heard of. Three weeks after I woke and began insisting I was Caroline Mercer, someone had hired that firm to send St. Anne’s a warning accusing me of identity fraud.
The client name was blacked out on the hospital copy.
Marcus had obtained the billing record.
JULIETTE MERCER.
My father whispered, “You knew.”
Juliette backed away. “I knew there was a woman claiming to be Caroline. That is not the same thing.”
“You stopped a DNA test,” Marcus said.
Grant’s head snapped toward her.
“What?”
Marcus turned one final report around.
At the bottom, beneath a recommendation for immediate DNA confirmation, someone had written:
DO NOT PROCEED.
May you like
The initials beside it were J.M.
And Juliette’s first lie finally cracked.
