Chapter 8 - THE HOUSE IN BOSTON
Lucinda’s Boston apartment was not being renovated.
Detective Cole discovered that within hours.
No permits had been issued.
No contractors had visited.
Lucinda had lied because she never intended to go there.
Security footage eventually placed her vehicle heading north toward a property outside Lenox.
Andrew recognized the address immediately.
It was a family hunting lodge their father had owned decades earlier.
Lucinda had inherited it.
Cole obtained a search warrant connected to the financial investigation.
They arrived just before sunset.
Lucinda was gone.
But someone had been there recently.
A fire still smoldered in the stone fireplace.
Several file folders had been burned.
A laptop sat submerged in the kitchen sink.
Upstairs, investigators found a locked bedroom.
Inside were boxes of Caroline’s belongings.
Andrew stared at them in disbelief.
Photographs.
Letters.
Old notebooks.
Even a scarf Caroline had worn the week before she died.
“What is all this?”
Cole opened one box carefully.
“These appear to have been removed from your house.”
Andrew shook his head.
“I never gave Lucinda permission.”
Elizabeth found something beneath a stack of papers.
A child’s drawing.
Alex had drawn it several months before Caroline died.
Three figures stood beside a green tree.
Mommy.
Daddy.
Alex.
A fourth figure stood farther away.
AUNT L.
Across Aunt L’s hands, Alex had drawn something green.
Elizabeth turned the paper over.
Caroline had written a note on the back.
Ask Alex what he saw near Grandfather’s old room.
Andrew looked toward Cole.
“My father’s old room?”
The lodge contained one.
It had been locked for years.
Investigators forced it open.
Dust covered most surfaces.
But one cabinet had recently been moved.
Behind it was a wall safe.
The safe required a four-digit code.
Andrew tried his father’s birthday.
Nothing.
Alex’s birthday.
Nothing.
Caroline’s birthday.
Nothing.
Elizabeth looked at the child’s drawing again.
“What if Caroline left the clue for Alex?”
Andrew studied the green tree.
Four branches had been colored darker than the others.
He entered 4-1-7-3, counting the branch groups.
The safe clicked.
Inside were old financial records.
A cassette recorder.
And a newspaper clipping dated twenty-three years earlier.
LOCAL INDUSTRIALIST HENRY MORROW DIES IN BOATING ACCIDENT.
Elizabeth nearly collapsed.
“That’s my father.”
Andrew caught her arm.
Caroline and Elizabeth shared a father.
Henry Morrow.
Lucinda had known him.
Everyone knew that.
Henry had been Andrew’s father’s closest business partner.
Cole removed the cassette.
A handwritten label was attached.
H.M. - NIGHT BEFORE LAKE.
They found an old player downstairs.
The recording began with static.
Then Henry Morrow’s voice filled the room.
“Lucinda came to me again today.”
Elizabeth covered her mouth.
Henry continued.
“She wants me to authorize the transfer.”
“I refused.”
“If anything happens to me, check Bellweather.”
Andrew looked at Cole.
The same company.
Twenty-three years earlier.
Henry’s voice became quieter.
“She thinks nobody knows she has been moving money.”
A door sounded in the background of the recording.
Then Henry said one final sentence.
May you like
“Lucinda, what are you doing here?”
The tape ended.
