PART 9

I called Patrice immediately. We met at her office. I placed the sealed envelope on her conference table. Patrice put on her gloves, carefully sliced the top open with a letter opener, and pulled out the contents. There were three documents. The first was a transfer of power of attorney. The second was a deed to a property I had never heard of. The third was a trust document The Harris Family Irrevocable Trust,” Patrice read aloud. She frowned. “Carol, this trust was established the day before Dale was arrested.” “I don’t understand. The court froze all his assets.” “Not this one,” Patrice said, her eyes scanning the pages. “Because this trust wasn’t in Dale’s name. It was in yours.” “Mine?” “Yes. But you didn’t sign it. Look at the date. It was signed by your brother, Daniel.” My breath caught. “Daniel died eleven years ago.” “I know. But this document was backdated, then legally re-registered through a loophole in the state’s corporate code. Carol, the primary beneficiary of this trust isn’t you.” “Who is it?” Patrice turned the page. “It’s your daughter.” Chloe. My daughter was twenty-two. She was in her second year of college in Athens. She was studying architecture. She hadn’t spoken to her father since the trial. She thought it was over. “Why would Dale put millions in a trust for Chloe?” I asked. “He tried to ruin me. Why would he do something nice for her?” “Keep reading,” Patrice said. Her voice had gone completely flat. I leaned over and looked at the next page. It was a contingency clause. A poison pill. In the event that the primary beneficiary (Chloe Harris) or the secondary beneficiary (Carol Harris) contests the validity of this trust, or attempts to access the funds prior to the primary beneficiary’s thirtieth birthday, the entirety of the trust’s assets shall immediately be liquidated and transferred to the tertiary beneficiary. “Who is the tertiary beneficiary?” I asked. Patrice typed something into her computer. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. “It’s not a person,” she said. “It’s a shell company. ‘Red Creek Holdings LLC.’” “Where is Red Creek Holdings registered?” Patrice stared at the screen. The color drained from her face. “Carol… the registered address for Red Creek Holdings is 442 Maple Street.” I closed my eyes. I knew that address. It was my brother Daniel’s old house. The house I had gone to with Patrice to find the box of evidence. The house his daughter, Sarah, had inherited.

I didn’t sleep that night. The next morning, I drove to Athens. I parked outside Chloe’s apartment building. I didn’t go up. I just sat in my car and watched her window. She was safe. She was in class. She didn’t know about the trust. She didn’t know about the poison pill. If I tried to claim the money to pay for her college, or if she tried to access it when she turned twenty-two, the millions would vanish. They would go to Sarah. To Daniel’s estate. Why? I called Patrice. “I need you to pull everything on Red Creek Holdings. Who owns it? Who set it up?” “I’m on it,” she said. “But Carol, there’s something else. I looked into Brenda’s claim that Dale didn’t actually go to prison. I made some calls to the Department of Corrections. Dale Harris is currently housed in a minimum-security facility in Troup County. He is there. He is in prison.” “Then what did Brenda mean?” “I don’t know yet. But I found out something else. The day before Dale was arrested, he didn’t just set up the trust. He also made a phone call. To Sarah.” My blood ran cold. “My niece?” “Yes. A fifteen-minute call. Then Sarah transferred fifty thousand dollars from Daniel’s estate account into an offshore routing number.” “Why would Sarah do that?” “I don’t know. But Carol, you need to go talk to her. Today.”

I drove back to Macon. I didn’t go to the salon. I drove straight to 442 Maple Street. Daniel’s old house looked exactly the same. The cracked mailbox. The maple tree. I walked up the porch and knocked. Sarah opened the door. She looked tired. She was holding a mug of coffee. When she saw me, she didn’t smile. She just stepped aside and let me in. “I wondered when you’d come,” she said quietly. I sat at the kitchen table. She sat across from me. “Sarah, what is Red Creek Holdings?” She looked down at her mug. “Dad’s insurance policy.” “Dad is dead. He doesn’t need insurance.” “No,” she said. “You do.” I stared at her. “What are you talking about?” Sarah took a deep breath. “Aunt Carol, you think Dale was the mastermind. You think he built that second company, forged your signature, and hid the money because he was greedy.” “He was.” “He was greedy,” she agreed. “But he wasn’t the one who came up with the plan. He didn’t know how to forge your signature well enough to fool the bank. He didn’t know how to set up the LLCs to hide the assets from the IRS.” My mouth went dry. “Who did?” “Someone who taught him,” Sarah said. “Someone who had been skimming money from Dad’s business for years. When Dad found out, this person threatened to go to the authorities. But they offered Dad a deal. If Dad helped them hide the money under your name, they would leave Dad alone.” “Who, Sarah? Who was it?” She looked up at me, and her eyes were filled with tears. “It was the person who introduced Dale to the commercial roofing business. The person who was his first investor. The person who stood up at your wedding and gave the toast.” My heart stopped. The room started to spin. “No,” I whispered. “No, that’s impossible.” “It’s true,” Sarah cried. “And when Dad tried to back out, when he tried to give you the box of evidence… they killed him, Carol. They made it look like a heart attack. But they poisoned him.” I couldn’t breathe. “And now,” Sarah whispered, “they know you have the trust documents. And they know Brenda talked to you.”

I stood up so fast my chair fell backward. “Who, Sarah?! Tell me who it is!” Sarah reached under the table and pulled out a small, leather-bound journal. Dad’s old ledger. “Dad wrote his name in here,” she sobbed. “The day before he died. He told me to hide it. He told me if anything ever happened to him, I was to give it to you.” She slid the journal across the table. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely open it. I turned to the very last page. There, written in Daniel’s shaky handwriting, was a name. I stared at the name. The name of the person who had ruined my marriage. The name of the person who had killed my brother. The name of the person who was currently coming for me. I looked up at Sarah. “He’s not just coming for the money,” I whispered. “No,” Sarah said. The front door of the house suddenly clicked. The doorknob began to turn slowly. I looked at the door. Then I looked at the journal in my hand. And I realized the terrifying truth. The story wasn’t over. It was just beginning. (TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 11…)

The doorknob turned slowly. I grabbed Sarah’s hand and pulled her behind the kitchen island. I held my breath. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. The door swung open. A man stepped inside. He was wearing a dark suit, holding a suppressed pistol. He scanned the empty kitchen, his eyes landing on the two cups of coffee still steaming on the table. He took a step forward. “Drop it,” a voice said from the doorway. The man froze. Patrice stepped into the hallway, her own weapon drawn and aimed squarely at the man’s chest. Behind her were two uniformed police officers. The man dropped the gun. It clattered against the hardwood floor. Patrice walked over, kicked the gun away, and handcuffed him. She looked at me, her face pale but determined. “I tracked your phone, Carol,” she said. “You left it on in the car. I figured if you were in trouble, I’d know.” I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Patrice. Thank God.” “Who is he?” Sarah whispered, staring at the man on the floor. Patrice looked down at him. “His name is Marcus. He’s a fixer. And he works for the man who actually owns Red Creek Holdings.” “Who?” I asked. Patrice looked me dead in the eye. “Arthur Vance.”

Arthur Vance. The name hit me like a physical blow. Arthur was Dale’s first investor. He was the man who taught Dale how to bid on commercial roofing contracts. He was the man who stood up at our wedding and gave the best man toast. He had held my hands, looked into my eyes, and told Dale he was lucky to have me. “Arthur?” I whispered. “But Arthur is in his seventies. He’s retired. He lives in a gated community in Atlanta.” “He lives in Atlanta,” Patrice corrected. “But he doesn’t retire. Arthur Vance has been running a shadow empire out of the state for thirty years. Dale was just his latest pawn.” Sarah stepped forward. “My dad knew? Dad worked for Arthur?” “No,” Patrice said. “Your dad was Arthur’s nephew. By marriage. Arthur’s brother married your grandmother. Arthur used your dad’s legitimate construction business to launder money. When your dad tried to get out, Arthur had him killed.” I looked at the journal in my hand. Daniel’s final warning. “Why now?” I asked. “Why come after me after all this time?” “Because of the trust,” Patrice said. “Arthur set up the trust to hide the money from the feds. But he needed a blood relative of Daniel’s to be the secondary beneficiary to make the tax loophole work. He chose you. But now that the feds are sniffing around, he needs you to sign the assets over to his shell company. If you don’t, he goes to prison for the rest of his life.” “And if I refuse?” Patrice checked her weapon. “Then he’ll kill you, Sarah, and anyone else who knows.”

“We need to go to the FBI,” I said. “I already called Agent Miller,” Patrice said. “He’s assembling a team. But Carol, Arthur knows we have the journal. He knows we know the truth. He’s not going to wait for the feds.” “Where is he?” Sarah asked. “My sources say he’s at your salon,” Patrice said. I blinked. “My salon? Why would he be at my salon?” “Think about it, Carol,” Patrice said. “Where is the one place you go every single day? Where is the one place you keep your most important, personal items? The place you never leave without checking?” My blood ran cold. My notary stamp. The stamp that was taped beside my mirror. The stamp Dale had tried to use to forge my signature. The stamp I had used every day for eleven years. “The routing numbers,” I whispered. “What?” Patrice asked. “The offshore routing numbers for the shell company,” I said, my mind racing. “Daniel told me in his letter that he hid the physical proof of the accounts. He said he hid it ‘where the ink meets the paper.’ I thought he meant the appointment book.” I looked at Sarah. “He didn’t mean the book. He meant the stamp.”

CONTINUE FOR NEXT PART…..