The Body on the Yacht
# CHAPTER 3
The explosion shattered windows along the western side of the mansion.
Guests screamed and ran from the ballroom as burning debris fell across the marina. Security guards rushed toward the water while household staff pulled fire alarms and opened the estate gates for emergency vehicles.
Edward ignored them all.
He ran across the lawn toward the docks, shouting Sophia’s name.
Jonathan followed more slowly.
Robert remained with Margaret and Caroline near the terrace. Charlie clung to Robert’s shoulder, feathers raised, watching the flames with wide amber eyes.
“Could she have survived?” Caroline asked.
A section of the yacht’s upper deck collapsed.
Robert did not answer.
Palm Beach fire crews arrived within minutes. They contained the blaze before it spread to the other vessels, but the yacht burned to its steel frame.
Divers entered the water at sunset.
They recovered one body.
It was not Sophia.
The victim was male.
The corpse had been hidden inside a storage compartment beneath the main cabin before the explosion. The fire destroyed fingerprints and facial features, but a metal surgical plate survived in the left leg.
The identification records belonged to Dr. Robert Hayes.
William Harrison’s physician.
Margaret stared at the detective who delivered the news inside the mansion’s library.
“Dr. Hayes examined my father the night before he died.”
The detective nodded.
“When did anyone last speak to him directly?”
Robert checked his phone.
“Three days ago. He sent me William’s death certificate electronically.”
“Did you see him after Mr. Harrison died?”
“No.”
Caroline looked toward the burned marina.
“If Hayes was already dead, who certified Father’s death?”
No one answered.
The detective asked where Sophia might have gone.
Edward stood near the fireplace, his clothes smelling of smoke.
“My wife was on that boat.”
“No body matching her description has been recovered,” the detective said. “The marina security footage shows a woman boarding. It does not show her remaining aboard.”
“She could have jumped before the explosion.”
“That is possible.”
Edward’s grief appeared real.
Margaret did not trust it.
“Why was Hayes’s body on Father’s yacht?”
Edward looked at her.
“You think I put it there?”
“I think everyone in this family has lied today.”
Jonathan sat with both hands wrapped around a glass of water.
He had barely spoken since the audio recordings exposed his conversation with Edward.
Robert placed William’s laboratory report on the table.
“Hayes may have known about the poisoning.”
“Or participated in it,” Caroline said.
Charlie paced along the back of a chair.
“Change the bottle, Doctor.”
The detective turned toward the bird.
“Did that animal just say—”
“He repeats conversations,” Robert explained.
Charlie continued in a man’s voice they all recognized from years of family medical visits.
“Too much will kill him.”
Dr. Hayes.
Then Charlie imitated William.
“That is the point.”
The room froze.
Edward laughed bitterly.
“Now Father ordered his own poisoning?”
Robert looked toward the bird.
“Charlie, what point?”
The macaw clicked his beak.
“Make them move.”
Margaret understood first.
“Father knew someone wanted him dead. He allowed the poisoning to continue so they would reveal themselves.”
Robert examined William’s letter again.
“He said his death happened earlier than intended.”
Jonathan looked horrified.
“He planned to fake it.”
Caroline stared toward the private hall where the coffin remained.
“Then who is inside the coffin?”
No one moved.
The detective ordered the funeral room sealed.
A medical examiner arrived two hours later. The Harrison family watched from the corridor as the mahogany lid was opened.
The body inside looked like William.
Silver hair.
Thin face.
Age-spotted hands folded over a dark suit.
But the face had been altered with professional prosthetics.
Dental comparison confirmed the truth.
The man in William Harrison’s coffin was not William Harrison.
He was Charles Mercer, a sixty-nine-year-old retired stage actor who had worked occasionally for Harrison Atlantic’s advertising division.
Caroline leaned against the wall.
“Why would an actor agree to this?”
Robert looked at the dead man.
“Perhaps he didn’t.”
The medical examiner found a puncture mark behind Mercer’s ear and signs of a fast-acting paralytic drug.
He had been murdered, dressed as William, and placed in the coffin.
Margaret turned toward Robert.
“Where is my father?”
“I don’t know.”
“You drafted this plan.”
“I drafted a will. William never told me he intended to replace his body.”
Edward entered the funeral hall and stared at the open coffin.
“If Father is alive, he arranged all of this.”
“Hayes is dead,” Margaret said. “Mercer is dead. Sophia is missing. Do you still think this is a game?”
Edward looked toward Charlie.
“The bird said Sophia didn’t kill him.”
“Which ‘him’?” Jonathan asked.
No one had considered that.
Did Charlie mean William?
Hayes?
Mercer?
Robert returned to the study and opened the remaining audio files.
File eight contained William speaking with Dr. Hayes.
“I need enough digitalis in my blood to appear poisoned.”
“That is dangerous.”
“Not fatal if monitored.”
“And the death certificate?”
“You will certify cardiac arrest after I leave the estate.”
“Who replaces you?”
“Mercer.”
Hayes sounded uneasy.
“He doesn’t know the full plan.”
“He knows enough.”
William intended to stage his own death.
The plan required Hayes and Charles Mercer.
Both men were now dead.
File nine revealed why.
Hayes asked:
“What happens if Edward or Jonathan confesses?”
“Then the will changes.”
“And if neither does?”
“Charlie will lead Robert to the blue cabinet.”
The next audio file was damaged.
File eleven contained only breathing, the opening of a door, and William saying:
“You’re early.”
A second voice replied:
“You shouldn’t have involved the doctor.”
The voice had been digitally distorted by background noise.
Then came a struggle.
William shouted.
Glass broke.
Charlie screamed in the recording.
The file ended.
Robert opened the final audio file.
It had been created the morning William supposedly died.
William spoke alone.
“If this file is playing, the plan has been compromised. Hayes may be dead. Mercer may be dead. I may be dead.”
Caroline began crying.
William continued.
“The person responsible is not one of my four children.”
Edward exhaled.
Jonathan covered his face.
“But one of my children has protected that person for years.”
The recording paused for nearly ten seconds.
Then William said:
“Robert, ask Charlie about the red room.”
Every person looked toward the macaw.
Robert brought Charlie closer.
“What is the red room?”
The bird tilted his head.
“Where Mother cries.”
Margaret frowned.
Their mother, Evelyn Harrison, had died fifteen years earlier.
The mansion contained no room called the red room.
Caroline whispered:
“There was one.”
As children, they had been forbidden to enter the narrow room at the end of the third-floor corridor. It had red wallpaper and remained locked after Evelyn’s death.
William claimed the room had suffered water damage.
Margaret looked toward her siblings.
“Father sealed it.”
Jonathan stood.
“I haven’t thought about that room in thirty years.”
Edward looked less certain.
Robert asked Charlie:
“Who goes into the red room?”
Charlie’s eyes fixed on Caroline.
“Sweet Caroline.”
Caroline went pale.
“That’s a song Father used to sing.”
The bird flapped his wings.
Then he repeated a woman’s voice.
“Caroline knows about the baby.”
Margaret turned toward her younger sister.
“What baby?”
Caroline’s handkerchief slipped from her fingers.
Before she could answer, security entered carrying a wet leather suitcase recovered from the water near the yacht.
The suitcase belonged to Sophia.
Inside were passports, cash, Dr. Hayes’s missing medical files, and a photograph taken thirty-four years earlier.
It showed Evelyn Harrison standing inside the red room.
She held a newborn baby.
Beside her stood a young Robert Collins.
On the back, William had written:
The fifth Harrison child.
Robert stared at the photograph.
Caroline looked at him.
“You were there.”
The attorney removed his glasses.
His face had lost all color.
“Yes,” he said.
“I was.”
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**👉 Continue to Chapter 4 — The Fifth Harrison**
