Chapter 4 - The Bank Account That Shouldn’t Have Existed
Conrad climbed the stairs without hurrying.
“Winslow,” he called. “I only want to talk.”
Charles pushed the bedroom door closed and locked it.
“You invited him here?” I demanded.
“I told him I would search the house.”
“You broke into my home for him?”
“I owed him money.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
The doorknob turned.
Conrad knocked once.
“Charles, open the door.”
Charles grabbed the dresser and dragged it across the floor, blocking the entrance.
I stared at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Making one decent decision before I die.”
The calmness in his voice frightened me more than panic would have.
Conrad struck the door with his shoulder.
The frame shook.
“There’s a ladder in the closet,” Charles said. “The window opens onto the porch roof.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You don’t even like me.”
“You’re still my uncle.”
His expression collapsed for a moment.
“That is more mercy than I deserve.”
The door splintered.
I shoved the cedar box into a backpack and climbed through the window. Charles passed me the ladder.
As I lowered it from the roof, the bedroom door burst inward.
Conrad’s voice followed.
“Where is she?”
I climbed down and ran.
Samuel arrived with police ten minutes later. Officers found Charles unconscious beside Bram’s bed and Conrad gone.
Charles survived with a concussion and two broken ribs.
At the hospital, he finally told us everything.
For years, Conrad had used old business connections to hide money stolen from Mercer Precision. Charles helped him create shell companies, believing Bram had cheated them both.
After Conrad’s release from prison, he tried to recruit my father.
Daniel pretended to cooperate while secretly gathering evidence.
On the night my parents died, Charles had called Conrad and warned him that Daniel was meeting Bram.
“I didn’t know Conrad would hurt them,” Charles said from his hospital bed. “I thought he would run.”
“You gave him their route,” I said.
Charles closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
My body went cold.
“You helped kill my parents.”
“No.”
“You told him where they would be.”
“I have lived with that every day.”
“That didn’t bring them back.”
He began to cry.
I felt nothing.
Not pity. Not satisfaction.
Only exhaustion.
Samuel placed the flash drive in an evidence bag.
“This may connect Conrad to the financial crimes, but proving he tampered with the car after eighteen years will be difficult.”
Charles looked toward him.
“There’s another account.”
“What account?” Samuel asked.
“Conrad kept an emergency reserve under a false identity. Daniel found it shortly before the accident.”
“Where?”
“Millbrook Federal.”
Helen Greaves was waiting when we returned to the bank.
Using information from the drive, her fraud team located a dormant account created under the name Calvin R. Mercer.
The balance was $2.3 million.
“That account shouldn’t exist,” Helen said. “The identification number belongs to a man who died thirty years ago.”
Samuel examined the transaction history.
The final withdrawal attempt had occurred two days after Bram’s funeral.
Conrad had returned because Bram was dead.
He believed the only person capable of exposing him was gone.
But Bram had spent eighteen years preparing for that moment.
The drive contained scanned contracts, supplier invoices, internal messages, and a recording of Conrad threatening Daniel.
It did not prove murder.
It proved fraud, identity theft, money laundering, and witness intimidation.
Enough to send him back to prison.
Enough to make him desperate.
“We need to freeze the account,” Samuel said.
Helen nodded. “I’ll contact federal investigators.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
Samuel told me not to answer.
I did anyway.
Conrad’s voice came through the speaker.
“You have something that belongs to me.”
“The police are looking for you.”
“The police have been looking in the wrong direction for eighteen years.”
“You killed my parents.”
Silence.
Then he laughed softly.
“Is that what Bram told you?”
“My father collected evidence against you.”
“Your father was a frightened child trying to impress an old man who never respected him.”
I gripped the phone.
“Why did you cut the brake line?”
The room became still.
Conrad did not answer directly.
“You sound like Bram,” he said. “Always deciding the verdict before the trial.”
Samuel motioned for me to keep him talking while Helen contacted security.
“What do you want?”
“The original drive.”
“You can’t erase what the bank has.”
“I don’t care about the bank.”
His voice changed.
“I care about the statement your father recorded the night he died.”
I looked at Samuel.
There had been no such file on the drive.
“Where is it?” Conrad asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Bram would have left a second key.”
My thoughts returned to the cedar box.
Photographs. Documents. Recorder.
No key.
Then I remembered Bram’s empty wrist after he sold my grandmother’s watch.
Except he had not worn an entirely empty wrist.
For years afterward, he wore a thin braided bracelet I had made at summer camp.
He was buried with it.
My stomach turned.
“You buried it with him,” Conrad said, reading my silence. “Didn’t you?”
The line disconnected.
I stared at the phone.
Samuel understood immediately.
“We need to call the cemetery.”
We arrived to find the gates open and the groundskeeper’s office empty.
Bram’s grave was at the top of a low hill beneath an oak tree.
Fresh dirt lay scattered over the grass.
Someone had begun digging.
A shovel rested beside the headstone.
Helen covered her mouth.
Samuel called the police.
I moved closer and saw a white envelope pinned beneath a stone at the base of the grave.
My name was written across it.
The paper was dry despite the damp ground.
It had been placed there minutes earlier.
Inside was a photograph of Charles’s hospital room.
Conrad had taken it through the door.
On the back, he had written:
May you like
Bring me the box before midnight, or your uncle finishes paying for what he did.
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