Chapter 4 - Geraldine’s First MoveBy morning, Geraldine had hired a lawyer.
Not a family lawyer.
Not the attorney who had represented the Vales for decades.
She hired Martin Sloane, a litigator known for emergency guardianship disputes.
Rachel called Cameron at 7:15 a.m.
“She filed.”
Cameron was sitting beside Savannah at the breakfast table.
He stood and walked into the hall.
“The petition?”
“Yes. Emergency temporary guardianship.”
“After what she did?”
“She claims the treadmill video shows a supervised behavioral intervention that was mischaracterized.”
Cameron almost laughed.
“What?”
“She also filed affidavits alleging you have become unstable since Elena’s death.”
His hand tightened around the phone.
“Whose affidavits?”
“Two former household employees and a physician.”
“A physician who has never treated me?”
“Apparently he claims he reviewed records.”
Cameron looked through the doorway at Savannah.
She was pushing cereal around the bowl without eating.
“What does Geraldine want?”
“Temporary decision-making authority over Savannah.”
“Why?”
Rachel did not answer immediately.
“That’s the question.”
A hearing was scheduled for Monday.
Rachel advised Cameron to keep Savannah away from Geraldine and cooperate fully with investigators.
Luz had already given police the original video file from her phone.
The metadata established when and where it had been recorded.
That mattered.
By ten, a child-welfare investigator arrived and interviewed Cameron separately from Savannah.
Cameron hated that Savannah had to repeat anything.
But the investigator was gentle.
When she finished, she told Cameron only one thing.
“Your daughter appears afraid of your mother.”
Cameron closed his eyes.
“How did I miss that?”
The investigator did not answer.
Around noon, Adam Pierce arrived with two sealed boxes of financial records.
Rachel joined them in Henry’s old study after a locksmith opened the door.
The red folder was gone.
But something else remained.
A rectangular clean space in the dust on the bookshelf.
Something had been removed recently.
Adam opened the first box.
“We compared your known signatures with the trust authorizations.”
“And?”
“I’m not a forensic examiner.”
“Adam.”
“Several look wrong.”
Rachel leaned over the documents.
Some signatures were perfect.
Too perfect.
Identical curves.
Identical spacing.
Cameron whispered, “Copied.”
Adam nodded.
“Possibly.”
Then he pulled out another file.
“The bigger problem is what the money purchased.”
Cameron looked at the documents.
GVR Advisory had received $1.82 million.
From there, much of the money had moved again.
To an LLC called Bellweather Holdings.
Bellweather had purchased something six months earlier.
A house.
Not just any house.
A six-bedroom property in Greenwich.
Rachel frowned.
“Who lives there?”
Adam slid over a photograph from a property report.
Cameron recognized the man standing beside Geraldine in the driveway.
Victor Hale.
His father’s former chief financial officer.
Cameron felt as if someone had punched him.
“Victor was fired before Dad died.”
“Why?” Rachel asked.
Cameron searched his memory.
“My father never told me.”
Adam looked grim.
“I found something else.”
He opened an archived board memo from six years earlier.
Henry Vale had ordered an internal fraud investigation involving Victor.
The investigation stopped when Henry suffered a major stroke.
He died eleven months later.
Geraldine had told Cameron that his father had decided not to pursue the matter.
But the memo said something different.
Investigation paused pending recovery of H. Vale. Evidence secured separately.
Cameron read the sentence twice.
“Secured where?”
Nobody knew.
Savannah suddenly appeared at the study entrance.
“Dad?”
Cameron immediately covered the financial pages.
“What is it?”
She held a drawing.
“I remembered something.”
Cameron crouched.
“Tell me.”
“The red folder.”
His heart accelerated.
“There was a picture inside.”
“A picture of what?”
Savannah pointed toward the desk.
“Grandpa.”
Cameron looked at the portrait of Henry.
“And?”
“With another man.”
“Victor?”
“I don’t know.”
Savannah frowned.
“The man had white hair.”
Victor’s hair was gray.
“What were they doing?”
“Standing by a wall.”
“What wall?”
Savannah looked frustrated.
Then she ran to the desk, took a pencil, and drew a rough rectangle.
Inside it, she drew a circle.
Then another.
Cameron stared.
Rachel leaned closer.
Savannah added a small square under the circles.
“I think this was behind them.”
Cameron knew that shape.
So did Geraldine.
It was the decorative steel door of his father’s old wine vault beneath the mansion.
A room that had been sealed after Henry died.
Cameron stood.
The wine vault was not listed among the family’s secure storage locations.
And Geraldine had insisted for years that nothing valuable remained inside.
Rachel saw his expression.
“What?”
Cameron looked toward the floor.
“There’s another room beneath us.”
Twenty minutes later, they reached the basement.
The old steel door remained shut.
Cameron entered his father’s code.
Nothing.
He tried Geraldine’s birthday.
Nothing.
Then Savannah whispered, “Try mine.”
Cameron looked at her.
“Why?”
“Grandma said Grandpa always spoiled me.”
Cameron entered Savannah’s birthday.
The lock clicked.
Inside the vault were no wine bottles.
May you like
Only one metal cabinet.
And on top of it sat a red folder.
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