Chapter 4 - THE SIGNATURE OF A DEAD GIRL'S BROTHER
“You're telling me somebody used your name to send your sister to her death?”
Adeline's voice sounded unnaturally loud inside the records room.
Elias stared at the authorization.
“Yes.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I remember that night.”
He placed the paper on the cabinet.
“I was at St. Brigid's Hospital. Delphine had performed at a charity concert. I was supposed to ride home with her.”
“What changed?”
“A hospital administrator asked me to stay. There was an emergency involving a patient whose family needed help.”
He stopped.
“I told Samuel to take Delphine home.”
Adeline looked at the signature.
“And this form was supposedly signed before you left?”
“Yes.”
“Could someone have brought it to you?”
“I don't remember anyone doing that.”
She studied the page more closely.
Then she noticed something.
“Mr. Baron, do you always sign your name this way?”
She pointed to the capital B.
Elias looked down.
The letter had a small break in its upper curve.
He opened a second folder and found an ordinary authorization he had signed the previous month.
Its B had no break.
Adeline retrieved another sheet from the same accident-year folder.
A routine office expense approval.
The capital B contained exactly the same tiny break as the route-change authorization.
Even the ink appeared identical.
“Someone copied an old signature,” she whispered.
Elias compared the documents.
Not similar.
Identical.
A reproduction.
He felt a slow, cold anger rising.
Someone had not merely blamed Samuel for a fatal accident.
Someone had manufactured evidence to make Elias responsible for the route.
And the family had never known.
“Don't touch anything else,” he said.
Adeline stepped backward.
“Am I in trouble?”
“No. I want the documents examined without anyone accusing us of changing them.”
He put both sheets into separate protective sleeves from the archival cabinet.
Then he locked the room.
They had barely reached the staircase when Ror Delaney appeared.
The older man wore a charcoal suit and carried the familiar leather briefcase he had used since Elias's father was alive.
His eyes moved from Elias to Adeline.
Then to the keys.
“Something wrong downstairs?”
“An inventory question,” Elias answered.
Ror smiled faintly.
“Miss Hayes has been rather interested in our old records.”
Adeline stiffened.
Elias noticed.
“How would you know that?”
“Security reports.”
“Which you requested.”
“Which you approved.”
Ror's expression remained polite.
He had always been careful with words.
“Elias, we've discussed this. Someone is passing our shipping routes outside the family. We cannot afford sentiment.”
“Then investigate the routes.”
“I intend to.”
“Good.”
Elias moved toward his office.
Ror followed.
“I also found something you should see.”
He removed a photocopy from his briefcase.
It showed a payment authorization dated three days before the accident.
Forty thousand dollars.
Recipient: Samuel Hayes.
Purpose: Special transportation assignment.
Adeline looked as though someone had struck her.
“That's a lie.”
Ror regarded her with practiced patience.
“I understand this concerns your father.”
“He never received that money.”
“The paperwork suggests otherwise.”
“My father was working overtime to pay our rent.”
Ror sighed.
“People are often complicated, Miss Hayes.”
Elias took the paper.
It showed Samuel's initials beside the amount.
But there was no receiving bank account.
No deposit confirmation.
Only a transaction number.
“Where's the original?” Elias asked.
“In the accounts archive.”
“Bring it to me.”
“Of course.”
“And the corresponding bank record.”
Ror hesitated.
Only briefly.
“Three-year-old records can take time.”
“Then start now.”
Ror closed his briefcase.
After he left, Adeline stood motionless.
“You believe him.”
“No.”
“You looked at me like you did.”
“I looked at the paper.”
“There's a difference?”
Elias met her eyes.
“There should be.”
She shook her head.
“For three years, people have used paperwork to tell me who my father was. Nobody ever asked me.”
Elias knew she was right.
He had spent years believing official reports because accepting them required less courage than reopening his sister's death.
“Tell me something about Samuel,” he said.
Adeline looked surprised.
“Something that isn't in those files.”
She considered the question.
“He made pancakes on Sundays. Terrible ones.”
Elias waited.
“He always burned the first batch because he'd get distracted reading the newspaper. Owen would complain, and Dad would pretend he'd done it on purpose.”
Her lips trembled.
“He kept the burned ones for himself.”
Elias remembered Samuel taking extra cookies from the kitchen to bring home.
He had never wondered who waited for them.
“I'm sorry,” Elias said.
Adeline looked away.
It wasn't forgiveness.
But it was the first apology anyone from the Baron family had offered her.
That evening, Elias examined the security footage from the basement.
He watched Adeline's earlier visits.
She had stopped at several doors because she was matching the numbers in Samuel's notebook.
Then he noticed something else.
On the same night Adeline first approached the records room, Ror had entered the basement nearly an hour later.
Without a briefcase.
He left carrying one.
Elias rewound the footage.
Ror had possessed access to the records for years.
There might be an innocent explanation.
But Elias no longer trusted easy explanations.
He summoned Bruno.
“Find out who approved the forty-thousand-dollar payment.”
Bruno glanced at the photocopy.
“Ror handles those accounts.”
“I know.”
“Then what exactly am I looking for?”
“The money.”
Elias tapped the document.
“Not the signature. Not the explanation. Show me where the money actually went.”
Bruno nodded.
Then he hesitated.
“There's something else.”
He placed the certified police property record on the desk.
Samuel's watch and dispatch pouch had been released to Baron security.
But an additional item had been listed.
A brass storage tag.
B-14.
Bruno frowned.
“I don't remember seeing it.”
Elias looked up.
“Delphine had it.”
“Then it must have been in her coat.”
“Samuel wrote the same number in his notebook.”
Bruno considered that.
“Dock Four used to have storage lockers with letter-and-number tags.”
“Still there?”
“Some. The old maintenance building is being cleared next month.”
Elias stood.
“Take the car.”
Twenty minutes later, Adeline was in the back seat of the Baron sedan.
She had insisted on coming.
“It's my father's notebook,” she told Elias. “If B-14 belongs to him, I deserve to see what's there.”
Elias had not argued.
They reached Dock Four as the afternoon light faded over the water.
The warehouses stood in long rows beneath rusted cranes.
Workers moved between trailers and loading platforms.
Bruno pointed toward a brick maintenance building.
“The old lockers are inside.”
Elias noticed Adeline searching the area.
“What's wrong?”
“Owen used to come here.”
“Why?”
“He thought one of Dad's former coworkers might remember something.”
She looked toward the loading ramps.
“He hurt his wrist here last month. He fell trying to get away from a security guard who said he was trespassing.”
Elias stopped.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I didn't think you'd care.”
Before he could answer, she froze.
A familiar teenage figure stood near the far loading ramp.
Gray hoodie.
School backpack.
White bandage on his wrist.
“Owen?”
The boy turned.
He was holding a small metal box.
A forklift emerged from behind a shipping container.
Its engine accelerated.
Owen looked toward the machine.
Then toward the ramp railing behind him.
There was nowhere to step.
“OWEN!” Adeline screamed.
May you like
The forklift kept coming.
And Elias realized its driver was looking directly at the boy.
