Chapter 10 - The House Was Never EmptyPolice searched the estate again.
This time they did not look for Lily.
They looked for Grant.
The mansion had forty-two rooms, multiple staircases, a wine cellar, maintenance corridors, an unused servant wing, and an attached indoor pool structure.
Officers checked every floor.
Nothing.
Then Ranger returned.
Lily was still recovering at the hospital, but when she heard the dog was back at the house she asked Adam one question.
“Can he sleep in my room?”
Adam smiled for the first time in days.
“He’s a police dog, sweetheart.”
“So?”
“So he has a job.”
Lily considered that.
“He found me.”
“Yes.”
“Then he’s good at his job.”
Adam had no argument.
At the estate, Ranger alerted near the service courtyard again.
Not at the wall.
At a detached maintenance garage.
Inside, police found no person.
But they found evidence someone had been there recently.
Food wrappers.
A blanket.
Disposable phone packaging.
A laptop charger.
Grant had likely hidden on the property for at least part of the previous night.
Why?
Miller stood inside the garage studying the shelves.
Then Vanessa arrived with her attorney.
“You asked to see me?”
Miller pointed toward the evidence.
“Recognize anything?”
She looked.
“No.”
“Grant has been here.”
Her face tightened.
“Why would he stay?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
Vanessa looked toward the mansion.
“The safe.”
“What safe?”
“Thomas had a document safe.”
Evelyn, brought into the garage minutes later, shook her head.
“It’s empty.”
“When did you check it?”
“After Thomas died.”
Vanessa looked at her.
“Did you check the second compartment?”
Evelyn stopped.
“What second compartment?”
Vanessa explained that Grant had once mentioned Thomas kept “insurance” behind the rear lining.
They hurried to the study.
The old safe stood behind a portrait.
Inside were jewelry records, old wills, and property deeds.
Miller removed the rear panel.
There was a shallow compartment behind it.
Empty.
But dust revealed the rectangular outline of something that had recently been removed.
Evelyn stared.
“I never knew.”
Adam asked Vanessa, “How did Grant know?”
She answered carefully.
“Maybe Edward told him.”
Miller examined the compartment.
A small torn strip of paper remained caught in the corner.
Rebecca Sloan read it.
It was part of a bank statement.
Dated eleven years earlier.
The name on the account was missing.
But the final four digits remained.
Rebecca immediately searched Edward’s ledger photographs.
One account appeared repeatedly.
“That’s the kickback account.”
“What was in here?” Adam asked.
Rebecca looked at Evelyn.
“Possibly the proof Thomas gathered against Edward and Grant.”
Grant had returned to the mansion to retrieve it.
Maybe he had succeeded.
Or maybe someone else had removed it first.
Evelyn slowly sat behind Thomas’s old desk.
“I found Grant in here last year.”
Everyone turned toward her.
“What?”
“He said Adam asked him to get tax records.”
Adam shook his head.
“I never did.”
Evelyn stared at the empty safe.
Another memory surfaced.
“Thomas changed the combination shortly before he died.”
“Did Grant know it?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“Me.”
Adam.
“And Edward.”
Miller asked, “Did you ever give the combination to Grant?”
Evelyn shook her head.
Then looked at Vanessa.
Vanessa recoiled.
“I didn’t even know the safe existed until Grant told me.”
That left Edward.
A dead man.
Unless Grant had obtained the combination before Edward died.
Or unless—
Adam stepped closer to the safe.
“Mom.”
Evelyn looked at him.
“Dad didn’t trust banks with everything.”
“Yes.”
“He sometimes stored duplicate records offsite.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Evelyn stared at her son.
Then she remembered.
Thomas had owned a small hunting cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Nobody in the family had visited it since his death.
Grant knew about the cabin.
And according to the estate’s smart-road camera log, a vehicle registered to Holloway Asset Management had passed through a toll station heading west less than an hour earlier.
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Grant was not fleeing.
He was looking for Thomas Hale’s evidence.
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