Chapter 8 - The Lie on the Birth Certificate
Evelyn tore the document in half.
“No.”
Robert watched calmly.
Charles looked devastated.
“It's fake.”
“Is it?” Robert asked.
“Yes.”
“Then tell her why Catherine had it.”
Charles couldn't.
That silence wounded Evelyn more than Robert's words.
She ran upstairs.
Annie followed.
Evelyn locked herself in Catherine's bedroom.
“Go away.”
“No.”
“I can fire you.”
“You've tried that.”
Silence.
Then the door opened.
Evelyn's face was wet.
“Was my entire life a lie?”
“I don't know.”
“That's becoming your favorite answer.”
“Because people keep asking me questions I can't honestly answer.”
Evelyn sat on the floor.
Annie sat beside her.
Eventually Charles entered.
He carried another document.
“A DNA test.”
Evelyn stared.
“From when?”
“Sixteen years ago.”
Charles had discovered the birth certificate while Catherine was alive.
He confronted her.
Catherine insisted it was forged.
They tested Evelyn.
Charles was her biological father.
The report confirmed it.
“Why keep the fake certificate?” Evelyn asked.
“Because Catherine wanted to know who created it.”
Robert had been trying to fracture the family even then.
But why?
Charles finally told the full story.
Robert and Charles founded their first company together.
Charles supplied most of the capital.
Robert supplied connections.
When the company nearly failed, Robert secretly borrowed money from criminal lenders and concealed the debt.
Catherine discovered it years later.
Robert had been siphoning company funds to repay those obligations and enrich himself.
“She was going to expose him,” Adrian said.
Charles nodded.
“Then she died.”
Police had ruled Catherine's fall accidental because there was insufficient evidence of foul play.
Charles had suspected Robert.
But suspicion wasn't proof.
“And you still kept him beside you?” Evelyn asked.
“I thought if he believed I trusted him, eventually he'd make a mistake.”
“You sacrificed thirteen years waiting?”
Charles had no defense.
Robert was detained for questioning after police arrived.
But the birth certificate wasn't enough.
Neither were old financial records.
His attorneys had him released within hours.
Before leaving, Robert looked at Annie.
“You're making yourself part of something that doesn't concern you.”
Annie replied, “You made it concern me when you tried to frame Margaret.”
Robert smiled.
“You think Margaret is innocent?”
He left.
That sentence bothered Annie all night.
The next morning she confronted Margaret.
“What did Robert mean?”
Margaret looked tired.
“I knew Catherine was investigating him.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes.”
Margaret sat.
“The night Catherine died, I saw Robert leave the west wing.”
Evelyn had entered unnoticed.
“You saw him?”
Margaret nodded.
“Why didn't you tell police?”
“I did.”
Evelyn stared.
“What?”
“The detective told me my statement had been recorded.”
It wasn't in the official file.
Someone buried it.
“Who was the detective?” Annie asked.
Margaret remembered.
Frank Ross.
Daniel's father.
Daniel hadn't merely become involved recently.
His family had been involved from the beginning.
They searched Daniel's room.
Behind a loose drawer, Adrian found bank statements.
Daniel had received monthly payments from Wellington Consulting.
But one statement contained something else.
A storage-unit rental.
Annie, Evelyn, Adrian, and Charles went there with police.
Inside were boxes containing items stolen from former employees.
Jewelry.
Cash.
Documents.
Everything used to frame them.
Evelyn stared at the evidence of what had been done through her.
“I ruined those people's lives.”
Annie touched her arm.
“Then help repair them.”
At the back of the unit was Catherine's missing safe.
Safe D.
The earlier cabinet had been a decoy.
Police opened it.
Inside were original financial ledgers.
Photographs.
And Catherine's handwritten account of the night she died.
Evelyn read aloud.
Robert knows I found the transfers. He threatened Charles. He threatened Evelyn. Daniel overheard us and promised to help me.
Annie frowned.
“Daniel was helping Catherine?”
That contradicted everything.
The next line changed it again.
Daniel says his father is working for Robert. He wants to expose them both.
Charles stared.
Daniel might not be Robert's accomplice.
He might have been infiltrating Robert's operation.
Adrian found a small digital recorder.
One file remained.
Daniel's voice.
“If you're hearing this, Robert knows I've turned against him. Don't trust the messages on my phone. He knows about the second phone.”
Second phone?
Police searched the box.
Nothing.
Then Annie noticed a photograph of the greenhouse.
On the back, Daniel had written:
Where Catherine planted roses, truth grows underneath.
They rushed back to Whitmore House.
Annie dug beneath the oldest rose bed.
Her shovel struck metal.
A phone.
Still sealed in waterproof plastic.
They charged it.
One unread message appeared.
It had been sent by Daniel that morning.
I'M ALIVE. ROBERT HAS SOMEONE IN THE HOUSE.
Then another message arrived.
Annie read it twice.
May you like
DON'T TRUST MARGARET.
Behind her, the greenhouse door slowly clicked shut.
