Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN WHO NEVER MADE IT HOMEThe drawing lay between Chadworth and Cora on the study desk.
Seven words.
One crooked greenhouse.
One little rabbit.
Evelyn had left behind a fortune in financial assets, several properties, and a respected charitable foundation. Yet the most important thing she might have entrusted to her daughters was a drawing made with colored pencils.
Chadworth traced the paper's edge.
“Why would Evelyn involve the girls in something dangerous?”
Cora studied the drawing.
“Perhaps she didn't intend to. Maybe she was creating a reminder for herself that would look meaningless to anyone else.”
“Or she knew someone was watching.”
Neither liked that possibility.
Outside the study, Marcus was arranging additional security. Chadworth had instructed him to preserve every available recording, change the property's access codes, and ensure nobody entered the grounds without authorization.
He had also asked Cora to help arrange professional support for his daughters.
The girls needed more than guards and locked doors.
They needed someone trained to help them feel safe again.
But Chadworth's thoughts kept returning to Evelyn.
He had spent twenty-seven months trying not to remember the night she died.
Now he opened the drawer containing the file he had refused to touch since her funeral.
It was a thick brown envelope labeled Evelyn Prescott—Accident Records.
Cora remained silent as he spread the contents across his desk.
Police reports.
Insurance correspondence.
Photographs.
A highway diagram.
The medical examiner's findings.
The official conclusion had been painfully simple: Evelyn lost control of her vehicle on a freezing November night and struck the barrier of Old Briar Bridge.
She died before emergency responders could save her.
Chadworth remembered receiving the call.
He had been in Manhattan, attending a private dinner with investors. His phone was on silent.
When his assistant finally interrupted him, his first irritated thought had been that something must have gone wrong with the acquisition.
Then she said Evelyn's name.
The rest of the night had become a blur.
He remembered driving to the hospital.
He remembered a police officer's compassionate expression.
He remembered asking the same impossible question repeatedly.
“Are you absolutely certain she's gone?”
Now, seated in his study, he looked at the accident report with different eyes.
“Evelyn hated driving in icy weather,” he said.
Cora looked up.
“She did.”
“She would cancel appointments before driving on dangerous roads.”
“Then why was she on that bridge?”
Chadworth couldn't answer.
He turned to the supplemental report.
A witness had reported seeing two vehicles traveling unusually close together shortly before the crash.
The investigator had noted the statement but found insufficient evidence to establish another driver's involvement.
Chadworth read the paragraph twice.
“I don't remember this.”
Cora leaned over.
“Was it discussed with you?”
“I don't know. Elliott handled the insurance company and most of the investigation.”
He felt sick.
For months after Evelyn's death, Elliott had gently encouraged him to focus on the children and let the professionals handle everything else.
Chadworth had been grateful.
He had confused delegation with protection.
Cora examined the witness's statement.
“The witness said a dark sedan appeared to be following Evelyn's vehicle.”
“She could have been mistaken.”
“Yes.”
“But what if she wasn't?”
Cora didn't offer false reassurance.
“Then we need to find her.”
Chadworth called Marcus.
“Can you locate the original investigator and the witness listed on page seventeen?”
“I'll start immediately.”
“And get me a secure copy of Evelyn's phone records from the archived estate materials. Whatever we legally have access to.”
Marcus hesitated.
“Sir, there's another issue.”
“What?”
“Someone accessed the family's older surveillance archives several times last month.”
“Who?”
“The activity came from an executive security account.”
“Yours?”
“No, sir. The account was originally issued to Mr. Crane's office for litigation holds.”
Chadworth tightened his grip on the telephone.
“Preserve the access logs.”
“Already doing it.”
When Marcus hung up, Cora asked a question Chadworth dreaded.
“How well did Sabina know Evelyn?”
He stared at her.
“Why?”
“Think about it.”
Chadworth leaned back.
“Sabina worked in community relations for Prescott Meridian. She organized fundraising events and public partnerships.”
“While Evelyn was alive?”
“Yes.”
“And was she involved in Redwater?”
Chadworth remembered a photograph from a charity dinner.
Evelyn had been standing beside him in a midnight-blue dress. On the other side of the table, Sabina had been speaking with Elliott.
He had barely noticed her then.
“Possibly.”
Cora folded her hands.
“Evelyn told me someone inside the company was deliberately diverting money intended for environmental repairs. She suspected the fraud reached higher than the finance department.”
“Did she name anyone?”
“She said she wasn't ready.”
“Why not?”
“Because she didn't know whom she could trust.”
The answer hung between them.
That afternoon, Chadworth made a visit he'd avoided for more than two years.
He entered Evelyn's old office.
Nobody had used the room since her death. Her favorite novels still filled the shelves. A silver frame displayed a photograph of Lorelai and Gemma eating watermelon beside a swimming pool.
On the desk stood a small brass sculpture of a bird.
Chadworth lifted it.
Evelyn had purchased it during their first vacation together, when they were young and he still believed an expensive dinner was an extraordinary luxury.
He remembered her laughing because he had tried to bargain with a street vendor over a twenty-dollar sculpture.
“You negotiate buildings for a living,” she'd teased. “Can't you let this woman earn a living?”
He hadn't thought about that memory in years.
Now it hurt more than the official photographs of her accident.
He sat in her chair.
For the first time, he wasn't looking for evidence.
He was looking for the woman he had loved.
A memory surfaced.
Three nights before her death, Evelyn had stood in their bedroom holding a folder.
“Chad, something is wrong with Redwater.”
He had been answering emails.
“Elliott says everything is fine.”
“Elliott isn't the person I trust to tell me whether people are safe.”
He remembered sighing.
“Evelyn, not tonight.”
She had stared at him.
Then she'd said something he had never forgotten, although he hadn't understood it.
“One day, you're going to discover that the people who flatter you aren't always the people who love you.”
Chadworth covered his face.
“I should have listened,” he whispered.
His phone rang.
Marcus.
“We found an old backup of Mrs. Prescott's call history, sir. It was saved with her estate records.”
Chadworth straightened.
“Anything useful?”
“There were three calls on the night of the accident.”
“To whom?”
“The first was to your office. It wasn't answered.”
Chadworth closed his eyes.
“The second?”
“To an independent environmental testing laboratory.”
“And the third?”
Marcus paused.
“Sir, the last number Mrs. Prescott dialed before her crash belonged to a woman who was employed by Prescott Meridian at the time.”
Chadworth already feared the answer.
May you like
Marcus said it anyway.
“Sabina Voss.”
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