Part 3: The Letter in the Safe
"Ms. Dalrymple is a court-appointed evaluator," Warren said, as if introducing the caterer. "She’ll simply be speaking with Nora about her emotional state. Entirely routine. We only want what’s best for the child."
"You want the shares," Julian said.
Warren’s smile did not move. "I want the family protected. Your father would have understood that."
The mention of his father hit Julian like a stone. Conrad Ashford had died fourteen months earlier, and in his last week, thin and hoarse in a hospital bed, he had gripped Julian’s wrist and whispered something Julian had filed away as the fog of morphine. Check the green ledger. Not Warren. Check the green ledger.
Dr. Singh stepped between the men with her palms raised. "Ms. Dalrymple may speak with Mrs. Ashford only if Mrs. Ashford agrees, and only with her sister present. Anything else, and I will call hospital security." Tess appeared in the doorway behind her like a bodyguard, and for the first time all night Julian saw Warren’s smile falter.
Julian drove to the old Ashford house in Lake Forest with the radio off and his father’s voice in his head. The estate had been shut since the funeral. He let himself in with the key under the stone heron, and the house smelled of cold cedar and forgotten cigars. The study was exactly as Conrad had left it, with the leather chair turned toward the window and the green ledger shelved between two thick books on shipping law.
He pulled it down. It was not a ledger at all. The cover was hollow, and inside it sat a small brass key taped to an index card in his father’s cramped handwriting. Behind the portrait of his grandfather, the card said. Don’t trust the lawyer.
Julian lifted the portrait off the wall. Behind it sat a wall safe the size of a bread box. His hands shook as the key turned, and for a second he was afraid there would be nothing inside but dust.
Instead there was a thick cream envelope, sealed with wax, with his own name written across it. Under the envelope lay a notarized document, the paper heavy and crisp, labeled Amended Last Will and Testament of Conrad J. Ashford, dated three weeks before his death. The notary’s stamp read Margaret Odell, and the witness line carried a signature Julian recognized immediately. It was not Raymond Pike’s. It was the name of a nurse who had cared for his father.
He broke the wax and unfolded the letter. Julian, if you are reading this, then Warren has done what I feared, and Raymond Pike has helped him. I have changed my will. Warren has borrowed against the company for years, and I have proof. He will say that I was not of sound mind. The new will places my voting shares in a trust for your first child, with the mother as sole guardian and you as trustee. If the child’s mother is declared unfit, Warren becomes trustee in your place. That is why he will come for her. Protect your family, son. I should have protected mine.
Julian read it three times. Then he turned the page over and found a final line scrawled at the bottom, the ink smeared as though written in a hurry. Pike drafted the first will. Ask him why he lied about the date.
His phone rang. It was Tess. "Julian, you need to come back right now." Her voice was thin and fast. "Nora’s blood pressure spiked when that woman started asking questions. Dr. Singh says the baby is in distress. They’re prepping her for an emergency C-section."
"How long?"
"Forty minutes. Maybe less. Warren said something to the evaluator about ‘documenting her episodes,’ and Nora started shaking and now she keeps asking for you. She won’t say it, but she keeps asking."
Julian shoved the letter and the amended will into his jacket and ran for the car. As he gunned the engine down the long gravel drive, headlights flared in his mirror. A black sedan swung across the gate and stopped with its nose pointed at his bumper. The driver’s door opened, and Raymond Pike stepped out into the glare with a phone in one hand and something small and silver in the other.
