Chapter 5 - The Dead Woman’s Necklace
Gideon stared at the frozen image.
“My sister was buried wearing that necklace.”
Norah looked at him.
“You’re certain?”
“I put it around her neck myself.”
Nobody spoke.
Marcus enlarged the frame.
The image blurred.
But the shape remained unmistakable.
A small silver wolf curled around a dark stone.
Gideon walked out.
Norah followed him.
She found him in the library standing before a locked cabinet.
He opened it and removed an old photograph.
Two children stood beside a lake.
A teenage Gideon.
A younger girl.
Around the girl’s neck was the same pendant.
“Isabella?” Norah asked.
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Car accident.”
“You saw her?”
His jaw tightened.
“No.”
The answer changed the room.
“Why not?”
“The vehicle burned.”
Norah understood.
“You buried a closed casket.”
“Yes.”
“Who identified her?”
Gideon looked at the photograph.
“Leonard.”
The attorney.
The man whose pen had appeared near the medical cabinet.
Norah felt the pieces shift.
“Gideon.”
“I know.”
Leonard Cross was brought back.
This time Gideon did not ask about medication.
He placed Isabella’s photograph on the table.
Leonard stared at it.
Then at Gideon.
“What is this?”
“Isabella.”
“I can see that.”
“Tell me how she died.”
Leonard’s face became guarded.
“You know how.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
“There was an accident.”
“Who identified her?”
“I did.”
“How?”
Leonard hesitated.
“Personal effects.”
“What personal effects?”
“Her bracelet. Watch. Purse.”
“The necklace?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Gideon placed the security image beside the photograph.
Leonard’s face emptied.
That was enough.
Gideon stood.
“Where is my sister?”
“I don’t know.”
Marcus moved toward Leonard.
The attorney raised his hands.
“I swear.”
“You told me she was dead.”
“I believed she was.”
“You identified a body you couldn’t see.”
“Your father ordered it.”
Gideon stopped.
“My father?”
Leonard looked suddenly older.
“Gideon, there are things you were never supposed to know.”
“Today seems ideal.”
Leonard sat down.
Twenty-two years earlier, Gideon’s father, Victor Wolf, had controlled the family with brutality disguised as discipline.
Isabella wanted out.
At nineteen, she discovered financial records that could have destroyed him.
She planned to take them to federal investigators.
Victor found out.
“He didn’t kill her,” Leonard said quickly.
Gideon’s expression turned lethal.
“That sentence should not require clarification.”
“He sent her away.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I arranged the car. Another person handled the rest. Victor wanted you to think she was dead because he knew you would search forever otherwise.”
Gideon looked as though someone had struck him.
Norah had never seen him lose control.
He did not now.
That was worse.
He became completely still.
“You let me bury an empty coffin.”
Leonard looked down.
“Yes.”
“You watched me stand beside it.”
“Yes.”
“You watched my mother break.”
Leonard whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Gideon swept the photograph from the table.
The frame hit the wall and shattered.
Norah did not move.
Neither did Marcus.
Gideon turned away.
“Where is she?”
“I truly don’t know.”
“Then who does?”
“The man who transported her died years ago.”
Norah thought about the security image.
“If Isabella is alive, why poison Gideon?”
Leonard looked at her.
“Maybe she didn’t.”
“Someone wearing her necklace entered the medical room.”
“Then someone wants Gideon to believe Isabella did it.”
Again.
A planted key.
Forged handwriting.
Stolen credentials.
A necklace belonging to a dead woman.
Every clue pointed perfectly toward someone.
Too perfectly.
Norah suddenly saw the pattern.
“The evidence keeps telling us where to look.”
Gideon turned.
“What?”
“Real mistakes are messy. These aren’t.”
She pointed toward the files.
“My initials. Mrs. Calder’s handwriting. Dr. Voss’s credentials. Dominic’s phone. Isabella’s necklace.”
Marcus understood.
“Someone is rotating suspects.”
“Yes.”
Gideon’s eyes narrowed.
“To keep us looking sideways.”
Norah nodded.
“Instead of asking who benefits if you die while everyone around you destroys each other.”
That question led directly to the company.
If Gideon died without a new will, his holdings would be distributed according to a complicated trust.
Dominic would receive a portion.
Several charities would receive more.
Senior executives would gain temporary voting authority.
But one person would control the trust during probate.
Leonard Cross.
Everyone looked at him.
Leonard actually laughed.
“You cannot be serious.”
Gideon was.
“You drafted the trust.”
“At your father’s instruction twenty years ago.”
“You never changed it.”
“You never asked.”
Marcus searched Leonard’s finances.
Nothing.
No unusual transfers.
No hidden debt.
No obvious motive.
Then Norah asked a simpler question.
“Who becomes powerful after Leonard?”
The trust named a successor administrator.
Adrian Vale.
The CFO.
The quiet executive who had barely spoken during every interrogation.
Marcus pulled Adrian’s records.
Clean.
Too clean.
He had worked for Wolf Meridian for seventeen years.
No criminal history.
No major debts.
No scandals.
Divorced.
One daughter living abroad.
But his employment history before Wolf Meridian contained a three-year gap.
Norah stared at his personnel photograph.
Something about his eyes bothered her.
She returned to the old picture of Isabella.
Then she saw it.
Not resemblance.
Recognition.
Adrian had been looking at Isabella’s photograph differently from everyone else.
Norah remembered the meeting.
When Gideon placed it on the table, Dominic looked confused.
Leonard looked terrified.
Adrian looked sad.
“You need to find out where Adrian was during those missing three years,” she said.
Marcus did.
The answer came the next morning.
Adrian Vale had lived under another name in Vermont.
And during that period, he had shared an address with a woman named Isabel Vance.
Isabel.
Isabella.
Gideon read the report without speaking.
Marcus continued.
“There’s more.”
A marriage license.
Adrian Vale and Isabel Vance.
Married fourteen years earlier.
No divorce record.
Gideon’s sister was alive.
And she was married to his CFO.
Gideon demanded Adrian be brought in.
Security searched his office.
Empty.
His house.
Empty.
His car was found at a train station.
Inside the trunk was a medical cooler.
Empty medication bottles lay inside.
The same medication Gideon had been taking.
Norah felt the old fear return.
Then Marcus’s phone rang.
He listened.
“Who?” Gideon demanded.
Marcus lowered the phone.
“Front gate.”
“What about it?”
“There’s a woman there.”
Gideon stopped moving.
May you like
Marcus looked at him.
“She says her name is Isabella Wolf.”
