Chapter 13 - THE CANADIAN SHADOWZ
The noise of the inauguration party felt deafening as I walked back out into the main hall. I looked at my mother, who was currently cutting the blue ribbon with giant silver shears to wild applause. She was beaming, finally free of the shadow that had defined her youth.
How could I destroy this peace? How could I walk up to her and say, “Mom, the lie wasn't just about money. Grandma's brother might have been murdered by Grandpa Frank”?
I couldn't. Not yet. Not without absolute proof.
That night, I met David Vance at his downtown legal office. The city lights stretched out below us through the floor-to-ceiling windows, but inside, the room was dimly lit, illuminated only by the glow of two laptop screens displaying financial audit trails.
David stared at the crumpled receipt Arthur Pendelton had given me, his face drawn tight in disbelief.
"Thomas Vance was my uncle," David said, his voice heavy with an old, forgotten grief. "When he disappeared in ninety-nine, the family was told he had fled to Canada after getting into debt with gamblers. Aunt Nancy wept for weeks. She kept a framed photo of him on her nightstand until the day she moved into the nursing home."
"Did Nancy know he might still be alive?" I asked, leaning over the mahogany desk. "Or did she think Frank killed him?"
David ran a hand over his silver hair, opening a secure database on his screen. "Nancy’s twelfth letter mentioned Frank’s ledgers and the mob payoffs, but it didn't explicitly mention Thomas. However... look at this."
David turned the screen toward me. It showed a transaction log for First Heritage Bank—the same bank where we had retrieved box 414.
"Every year on October 14th," David explained, tracing a glowing red line on the screen, "an automated wire transfer of twelve thousand dollars was deposited into a restricted trust account in Quebec. The depositor name was listed as F.H. Enterprises—Frank Harrison’s private shell company. The payments didn't stop when Frank died eight years ago. They were authorized to continue until Nancy’s death."
"Hush money," I whispered, horrified. "Frank wasn't just hiding mob debt. He was paying monthly blackmail to keep Thomas quiet—or paying someone off to cover up Thomas's death."
"Or," David added softly, "Thomas was blackmailing Frank from the shadows, using his knowledge of the courthouse fraud to bleed Frank dry for twenty years."
"Where did the last transfer come from?" I demanded.
"A private credit union in Sherbrooke, Quebec," David said, pulling up an address. "Just two hours north of the border. If we want to know what really happened the night Grandpa Frank’s safe was emptied, we have to cross that line."
"I'm going," I said immediately.
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"You can't go alone, Emily," David warned. "If Thomas Vance is alive and spent twenty-five years hiding in the dark, he isn't going to welcome Frank Harrison’s granddaughter with open arms. And if someone else is managing that money... someone who wants that secret kept buried... you're putting a target on your back."
"My mother lost twenty-five years of her life because of what happened that night," I replied, my voice steadying into unyielding resolve. "I am not letting another ghost haunt her. I leave at dawn."
