Chapter 13 - THE LOCKED STUDYMichael activated the recording function on his phone.
“What do you mean?”
Margaret laughed quietly.
“You have always needed other people to think for you.”
“Did you hurt Laura?”
Daniel stood in the hallway.
Michael gestured for Officer Mendoza to move him upstairs.
But Daniel refused to leave until she gently guided him away.
Margaret answered.
“Laura died because she believed every truth needed to be exposed.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one you deserve.”
The call ended.
Detective Blake immediately began tracing it.
The signal came from a disposable phone near downtown Dallas.
By the time officers arrived, the phone had been left inside a bus station trash bin.
No fingerprints.
No usable camera image.
Margaret wanted Michael frightened, not informed.
Police reopened Laura’s collision file.
The vehicle had hydroplaned during a storm.
There was no original evidence of tampering.
Blake warned Michael not to make assumptions.
Margaret might be using Laura’s death as psychological leverage.
Michael understood.
Yet the sentence followed him through every room.
Laura should have stopped searching.
Eleanor returned to the mansion under medical supervision.
The moment she crossed the wooden entrance, Daniel ran to her.
Noah remained close to Michael but smiled when Eleanor opened her arms.
Margaret had tried to make the mansion feel like hostile territory.
Eleanor reclaimed it simply by being present.
She insisted on visiting her study.
The door opened with the brass key.
Inside, drawers had been searched and files rearranged.
A portrait of Eleanor’s late husband rested facedown on the desk.
“He gave me this house forty-two years ago,” she said.
Michael placed the original trust papers before her.
“Margaret filed a false deed.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“She brought it to the care home. She said if I signed, you would not lose the mansion to business debts.”
“Did you sign?”
“I signed one page after she covered the others.”
Preston had notarized the final document.
The signature might be genuine, but the consent was not.
Eleanor opened the lower drawer.
It appeared empty.
She pressed a carved wooden panel.
A hidden section slid forward.
Inside was a handwritten inventory.
Jewelry.
Trust certificates.
Laura’s legal correspondence.
All items Margaret removed.
At the bottom, Eleanor had recorded serial numbers from two family heirlooms.
Detective Blake entered them into a stolen-property database.
One diamond necklace had been sold at a Dallas auction house.
The seller used a false name, but surveillance footage showed Margaret.
The financial case strengthened.
Then Eleanor noticed something missing from the study wall.
A small painting of the original Carter farmhouse was gone.
“It wasn’t valuable,” Michael said.
“The painting wasn’t.”
Eleanor touched the empty hook.
“The paper behind it was.”
“What paper?”
“A codicil to my will.”
Eleanor had amended her will after Laura’s death.
The codicil removed Margaret from a small caregiver’s inheritance and barred any employee from acquiring Carter property through private transfer.
If the document surfaced, it would destroy Margaret’s claim that Eleanor intended to reward her with the mansion.
“Was it filed with the court?” Michael asked.
“No. Samuel Grant was supposed to collect it before his stroke.”
Margaret had the only signed original.
That evening, Preston Vale requested a meeting through his attorney.
He was prepared to cooperate.
He claimed Margaret forced him to sign the false deed.
In exchange for leniency, he would reveal where she kept the missing codicil.
But he demanded one condition.
Daniel had to identify the place first.
May you like
According to Preston, Margaret once told him:
“The child saw where I hid it.”
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