Samuel wanted to cancel my meeting with David.
I refused.
“Then I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Margaret.”
“If David believes I suspect him, he’ll prepare.”
Samuel removed his glasses.
“You are not conducting a criminal investigation.”
“I know.”
“You are also not your father.”
“I know that too.”
“Good, because Richard occasionally believed preparation made him invulnerable.”
I almost smiled.
“That sounds like criticism.”
“It is affectionate criticism.”
Thomas sat across the office.
“I could go.”
Samuel and I answered simultaneously.
“No.”
Thomas raised both hands.
“Understood.”
We compromised.
I would meet David at Collins Industrial Supply.
Samuel would arrive thirty minutes later for what David believed was a routine ownership review.
A forensic accountant Samuel trusted would come with him.
Thomas would stay away.
The company occupied three connected buildings on the industrial edge of town.
I had worked there during college, but I barely recognized it.
The old warehouse had doubled in size.
Dad’s tiny administrative office had become a glass-fronted two-story building.
The sign still used the same block lettering he had designed himself.
COLLINS INDUSTRIAL SUPPLY.
Seeing it tightened something in my chest.
This was not an abstract asset.
Dad had spent forty years building it.
People depended on it.
Employees.
Drivers.
Warehouse workers.
Sales staff.
Families I had never met.
I suddenly understood why he had not simply sold everything and divided the cash.
A receptionist greeted me.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see David Mercer.”
“Name?”
“Margaret Collins.”
Her expression changed immediately.
“Oh.”
That was becoming a familiar reaction.
“I’ll let him know.”
David came downstairs himself.
He was exactly as I remembered from the funeral.
Gray hair.
Careful movements.
A face that seemed naturally serious.
He extended his hand.
“Margaret.”
“David.”
“Your father would be glad you came.”
I wondered whether that was true.
“Would he?”
David’s eyes flickered.
“Very.”
He led me upstairs.
Dad’s office remained at the end of the corridor.
The door was closed.
I stopped.
“Is anyone using it?”
“No.”
“Can I see it?”
“Of course.”
David unlocked the door.
The smell hit me first.
Coffee.
Paper.
The faint oily scent Dad carried home from the warehouse.
His desk remained exactly as he had left it.
Yellow legal pad.
Pens.
A photograph of Mom.
Another of the three of us as children.
I touched the back of his chair.
“He kept our picture.”
“Always.”
I looked at David.
“Even when he was angry?”
“Especially then.”
I thought of Thomas.
Mom.
Me.
Dad had never been good at saying what photographs apparently said for him.
David walked toward a cabinet.
“Your father kept certain corporate documents here.”
“Was this the cabinet someone searched?”
His hand stopped.
“Who told you that?”
“Dad.”
That answer was technically true.
David turned.
“He believed someone entered the office.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was anything missing?”
“A file.”
“What was in it?”
“Trust documents, some internal correspondence, and copies of acquisition proposals.”
There.
“Acquisition proposals from Northbridge?”
David’s face became careful.
“Yes.”
I sat in Dad’s chair.
He noticed.
I noticed him noticing.
“Why did you sign a letter of intent eighteen months ago?”
David did not move.
For a moment, every sound from the warehouse below seemed louder.
Forklift.
Metal.
A distant reversing alarm.
Then he closed the cabinet.
“You’ve seen that.”
“Yes.”
“Samuel?”
“Northbridge package.”
He walked toward the window.
“That document is not what it appears to be.”
I almost laughed.
Everyone in my family had used some version of that sentence.
“What does it appear to be?”
“A preliminary agreement to explore a sale.”
“And what is it?”
“A preliminary agreement to explore a sale.”
I stared.
“Then it appears to be exactly what it is.”
David almost smiled.
“Fair.”
“Did Dad authorize you to sign it?”
“No.”
The honesty surprised me.
“Why did you?”
“Because I was trying to learn who was behind Northbridge.”
That was not the answer I expected.
“Why?”
“Your father asked me to.”
I studied his face.
“You expect me to believe Dad told you to negotiate secretly with a company he distrusted?”
“He didn’t distrust them yet.”
“When did he?”
“After the first meeting.”
“What happened?”
David sat across from me.
“Northbridge knew things they should not have known.”
“Pricing?”
“More.”
“Customer lists?”
“Yes.”
“Supplier terms?”
“Yes.”
“Thomas.”
“We eventually learned that.”
“But this was eighteen months ago.”
David nodded.
“Before Thomas began taking direct payments, as far as we knew.”
I frowned.
“Then how did Northbridge know?”
“That is what Richard wanted to discover.”
“So you signed the letter.”
“To keep them talking.”
“Did Samuel know?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Richard wanted the inquiry compartmentalized.”
That sounded like Dad.
It also sounded conveniently impossible to verify.
“Do you have proof?”
David looked toward Dad’s desk.
“Yes.”
He opened the bottom drawer.
Empty.
His face changed.
“What?”
“There should be a folder.”
“What folder?”
He pulled the drawer completely out.
Nothing.
“David.”
He stared at the empty space.
“Richard’s authorization.”
My stomach tightened.
“The document proving your story.”
“Yes.”
“Convenient.”
“I understand how this looks.”
“Do you?”
He stood.
“I have emails.”
“Show me.”
We went to his office.
David logged into the company archive.
He found a series of messages between himself and Dad.
Most were mundane.
Supplier issues.
Budgets.
Staffing.
Then one email contained a line:
Proceed with the preliminary conversation. Do not commit ownership. I want to know what they know.
Dad.
Another:
They have internal numbers. Find the source before we shut the door.
Another:
Do not tell Helen yet.
I stopped.
“Why not Mom?”
David looked uncomfortable.
“Richard was beginning to suspect someone in the family.”
“Thomas?”
“At first.”
“Then?”
“He discovered the private reserve account.”
My chest tightened.
“You knew about that?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Richard showed me.”
“Did you know Mom was receiving Northbridge payments?”
“Eventually.”
“When?”
“About nine months ago.”
“Why didn’t you stop doing business with them?”
“We began unwinding contracts.”
“Began?”
“Industrial contracts are not light switches, Margaret.”
His tone sharpened for the first time.
“Some supply commitments ran twelve to twenty-four months. Canceling everything immediately could have exposed the company to litigation and disrupted customers.”
I understood enough from my summers there to know that was plausible.
“Did Dad believe you?”
“He did.”
“Completely?”
David looked away.
That was answer enough.
“What did he suspect you of?”
“Taking money.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Can you prove that?”
“Yes.”
He opened a spreadsheet.
“This is the internal transaction review.”
Rows of payments appeared.
Northbridge invoices.
Vendor adjustments.
Consulting charges.
David had highlighted anomalies.
“Why isn’t this in Dad’s notebook?”
“He kept only summaries there.”
“What am I looking at?”
“Two accounting streams.”
I leaned closer.
“What?”
“Not literally two company ledgers. Two reporting versions.”
“One real, one false?”
“More subtle.”
He showed me invoice 48117.
The purchasing system showed $214,000.
The vendor reconciliation file showed $187,000.
A difference of $27,000.
“Where did the difference go?”
“That is what Richard was trying to establish.”
Another invoice.
Another difference.
Another.
“How many?”
“At least thirty-one.”
My stomach tightened.
“How much total?”
“Approximately nine hundred thousand dollars.”
I stared.
Mom’s reserve account contained only part of that.
“Where’s the rest?”
“We don’t know.”
“Who could alter these records?”
“Several people.”
“Names.”
David hesitated.
“Your father.”
“Obviously.”
“Me.”
“Who else?”
“The controller.”
“Name?”
“Rachel Kim.”
“Anyone else?”
“Administrative access existed under an old executive credential.”
“Whose?”
David looked at me.
“Your mother’s.”
I blinked.
“Mom worked here?”
“Years ago.”
I vaguely remembered.
Before Sarah was born, Mom handled payroll.
“But she hasn’t worked here in decades.”
“The credential should have been disabled.”
“Was it?”
David shook his head.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Your father kept it active for occasional family administrative work.”
I closed my eyes.
Another door left unlocked because Dad trusted the person behind it.
“Could Mom alter invoices?”
“With that credential, certain fields.”
“Could Thomas?”
“Not directly.”
“Could Eric Lawson?”
“Not without access.”
“Could somebody use Mom’s login?”
“Yes.”
That distinction mattered.
I wrote it down.
David watched.
“You really are Richard’s daughter.”
I looked up.
“All three of us are.”
He nodded.
“You’re right.”
Samuel arrived with the forensic accountant, a woman named Priya Shah.
I told them what David had shown me.
Priya immediately asked for system logs.
David gave her access.
For two hours, I understood perhaps half of what they discussed.
Authentication records.
Archived databases.
Invoice histories.
Metadata.
Backup snapshots.
I resisted pretending.
Whenever I didn’t understand, I asked.
Dad would have approved.
At noon, Priya found the first useful pattern.
The altered records had been changed mostly late at night.
Often remotely.
The login used was Mom’s old credential.
But the network addresses varied.
Some connected through the company’s own remote-access system.
Others came from an outside location.
“Can you identify it?” I asked.
“Possibly.”
She worked.
Ten minutes later, she looked at Samuel.
“This block belongs to Northbridge.”
David swore.
“So Northbridge accessed our system.”
Priya held up one finger.
“Not necessarily. It shows traffic associated with infrastructure registered to them. We need more before stating who actually logged in.”
Samuel nodded approvingly.
Facts.
Not conclusions.
I was beginning to understand why Dad trusted people like them.
Priya continued through the logs.
Then she stopped.
“What?”
She enlarged one record.
“This session is different.”
“How?”
“It came from a residential connection.”
“Whose?”
She ran the information through company records.
Then looked at me.
“The account on file belongs to Thomas Collins.”
My stomach sank.
Of course.
Another layer.
Another secret.
But Priya frowned.
“Wait.”
She compared dates.
“This session occurred at 2:13 a.m. on March fourteenth.”
“So?”
David looked up.
“Thomas was in the hospital that night.”
I stared.
“What?”
“His youngest daughter had emergency surgery.”
I remembered.
Appendicitis.
I had visited the next morning.
Thomas had slept in a chair beside her bed.
“So someone used his home internet while he wasn’t there.”
“Possibly.”
“Who had access?”
I already knew one person.
Mom had a key to Thomas’s house.
She had stayed there with the children often.
But Thomas’s wife had access too.
So did his teenage son.
We needed facts.
Priya examined more sessions.
Several occurred while Thomas was demonstrably elsewhere.
One during a family wedding.
Another during a business trip.
Someone had been using his connection.
Or routing traffic through it.
David leaned over the screen.
“Look at the authentication pattern.”
Priya nodded.
“The login uses Helen’s credential, but the device signature is consistent across most sessions.”
“Meaning?”
“The same computer appears to have been used.”
“Can we identify the computer?”
“Not from this alone.”
Then David went pale.
“What?”
He pointed at the device label embedded in an old connection log.
HC-LAPTOP-02.
Helen Collins.
My mother’s laptop.
I stared at the screen.
Samuel said nothing.
Priya did.
“This still doesn’t prove Helen personally made the changes.”
I appreciated her precision.
“But it proves her laptop did.”
“It strongly indicates that device was used.”
David sat down.
“Richard bought her that laptop.”
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
I thought of Mom at the dining-room table.
You don’t understand what it was like.
Maybe I didn’t.
But I was beginning to.
My phone buzzed.
Sarah.
I stepped into the hallway.
“Hello?”
“Margaret?”
Her voice sounded strange.
“What happened?”
“I’m at Mom’s.”
My stomach tightened.
“Why?”
“I brought the bracelets back.”
I closed my eyes.
“Okay.”
“She’s gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“Her clothes are here. Her car is here. But she’s not.”
“Maybe she went for a walk.”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because her laptop is gone.”
I turned toward the office.
“Sarah, listen carefully. Don’t touch anything else.”
“Why?”
“Where is Mom’s phone?”
“On the kitchen counter.”
That frightened me more than if it had been missing.
“Sarah.”
“What?”
“Call Thomas. Tell him to meet you there. I’m coming.”
“What’s happening?”
I looked through the glass at Priya’s screen.
At the device label connecting Mom’s laptop to years of altered company records.
“I don’t know yet.”
I ended the call.
Then David’s office phone rang.
He answered.
His expression changed.
“Who is this?”
He listened.
Then looked directly at me.
“What?”
He slowly held out the receiver.
“It’s Eric Lawson.”
I took it.
“Eric?”
His voice was no longer polished.
“Margaret, if your mother is missing, I know where she may have gone.”
Every person in the office turned toward me.
“Where?”
“The old Northbridge property on Route Nine.”
“Why would she go there?”
Eric breathed out.
“Because she called me forty minutes ago.”
“What did she want?”
“To give me the one thing your father hid that could destroy both of us.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 11: My Mother Disappeared With Dad’s Missing File, but Eric Lawson’s Warning Made Me Question Which One of Them Was Actually Running
The Morning My Family Divided My Father’s Life, Everyone Seemed to Know What I Would Receive Except Me
Part 10 of 20
