Chapter 4 - THE MAN WHO BOUGHT THE WATCH
The antique dealer's receipt changed everything.
Victor had not merely removed the watch from his brother's bedroom. He had sold it six weeks before Dominic died, while claiming to manage the family's affairs in his brother's best interests.
Leo wanted to drive straight to Albany.
Martin stopped him.
“If your uncle has already been moving assets, a confrontation could give him time to destroy whatever evidence remains.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“We find the buyer, establish the chain of ownership, and determine whether the watch still exists.”
Grace stood by the kitchen table, holding Willow's hand.
“I know someone who might help.”
Leo turned toward her.
“Who?”
“Your father's former bookkeeper. Samuel Price.”
Martin's expression changed.
“Samuel retired seven years ago.”
“He didn't retire voluntarily,” Grace replied. “He left after an argument with Victor.”
Leo remembered the name.
Samuel had worked for the Caruso companies for nearly thirty years. He had managed payroll, reconciled accounts, and maintained the records for the charitable foundation.
When Leo was younger, Samuel had sometimes brought him books from the public library because Dominic believed children should learn about more than money.
Then Samuel had disappeared from the estate.
Victor told the family he had become unreliable.
“What did the argument involve?” Leo asked.
Grace looked toward Willow.
“Your father asked me to keep a copy of something Samuel brought to the house. He said it might matter one day.”
“What was it?”
“A ledger.”
Martin straightened.
“Where is it?”
Grace looked uncomfortable.
“I don't know. I never opened it. Your father asked me to put it somewhere safe.”
“Where?”
“In the linen room. Behind the old cedar shelves.”
Leo stared at her.
“You've had evidence all this time?”
“I had a book I was told not to throw away. I didn't know what it meant.”
Her voice trembled slightly.
“I was trying to keep my job. My husband had just died, Willow was a baby, and your father was the only person who treated me like I wasn't disposable.”
The shame returned, deeper than before.
Leo had spent eighteen months resenting his father for refusing to sell affordable apartments. He had assumed Dominic's silence meant indifference.
He had never asked how the staff were coping during his father's illness.
He had never asked what they had seen.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
Grace looked at him in surprise.
“For what?”
“For assuming that because you worked here, you had no part in what happened.”
She held his gaze.
“Your father never made that mistake.”
They found the ledger behind a row of old household manuals.
It was a thick, dark-green book with a cracked spine and several pages marked in pencil.
Martin spent the next hour examining the entries.
At first, the records appeared ordinary.
Payments to contractors. Repairs to apartment buildings. Charitable donations. Payroll expenses.
Then he noticed a series of transfers made through a company called Northstar Residential Holdings.
The transfers began three years earlier.
They grew larger each quarter.
And each one had been authorized by Victor.
“What is Northstar?” Leo asked.
Martin flipped through the pages.
“A holding company. It owns several properties that were once part of the Caruso portfolio.”
“Why would my father transfer them there?”
“He may not have known.”
Martin pointed to the signatures.
“These approvals appear to have been executed using your father's authorization code. But the dates overlap with periods when he was hospitalized.”
Leo felt sick.
“Could Victor have forged them?”
“Possibly. But we need original banking records and testimony from people who handled the transactions.”
He turned another page.
A handwritten note appeared beside a transfer of $2.8 million.
Eleanor's portion—do not combine with operating funds.
Leo read it twice.
“Eleanor's portion?”
Martin looked at him.
“Your grandmother.”
The Caruso family fortune had always been described as Dominic's achievement and his father's legacy. Eleanor was remembered as a devoted wife who had managed the household and quietly supported the family's charitable work.
Nobody spoke about her financial interests.
But the ledger suggested she had owned a separate share of the family's property.
Martin checked another entry.
Then another.
“The transfers may involve assets that were never legally part of your father's estate,” he said.
“Could that explain the will?”
“It could explain why someone would want to control it.”
Leo looked toward the window.
Outside, the river moved beneath the gray October sky.
His father had been trying to protect more than an inheritance.
He had been trying to preserve the boundaries of a family fortune that someone had spent years quietly dismantling.
They found Samuel Price living in a modest house outside Poughkeepsie.
He was seventy-two, with silver hair and a careful way of speaking. When Leo introduced himself, Samuel opened the door but did not invite them inside.
“I wondered when someone would come asking about Dominic,” he said.
“You knew something was wrong?”
“I knew the numbers didn't add up.”
Samuel looked at Martin.
“And I told him.”
“Your father?” Leo asked.
“Your uncle.”
Samuel's mouth tightened.
“Victor said the discrepancies were clerical errors. When I refused to approve another transfer, he accused me of stealing from the company.”
“Did he have proof?”
“No. But he had control of the records.”
Samuel had resigned after Victor threatened to report him to the authorities.
He had kept copies of several financial statements, but he had never gone public.
“Why not?” Leo asked.
Samuel looked at him sadly.
“Because your father asked me not to.”
Leo stiffened.
“My father knew?”
“He knew about the transfers. He didn't know how much had been taken.”
Samuel explained that Dominic had discovered the first suspicious transaction after recovering from his second hospitalization. He had quietly begun investigating, afraid that an accusation without proof would destroy the family businesses and the employees who depended on them.
“He wanted to confront Victor,” Samuel said. “But he also wanted to understand why his brother had done it.”
“Did you find out?”
Samuel glanced toward the street.
“I found the company that received the money. Northstar Residential Holdings. The registered director was a woman named Evelyn Shaw.”
Martin frowned.
“I've never heard of her.”
“Neither had I. But her address was the same as the office of an attorney who represented Victor in several private transactions.”
“Do you have the records?” Leo asked.
Samuel nodded.
He led them to a small office and unlocked a filing cabinet.
Inside were copies of bank transfers, property deeds, and correspondence between Northstar and several Caruso companies.
One letter contained a phrase that made Martin go silent.
The Eleanor interest must be resolved before the final testament is executed.
Leo looked up.
“What does that mean?”
Martin read the sentence again.
“Someone was discussing your grandmother's ownership interest and your father's will in the same transaction.”
Samuel removed another sheet.
“This was the last document I received from Dominic.”
It was a handwritten note, dated two weeks before Dominic died.
If I cannot recover the original watch, do not let the family settle the estate until the Eleanor interest is identified.
Leo felt his stomach tighten.
“Why the watch?”
Samuel shook his head.
“He never told me.”
Then Samuel placed a final document on the table.
It was a receipt from the same antique dealer in Albany.
But this one contained a second name.
The buyer had been recorded as Victor Caruso's company, not Victor personally.
And beneath that entry was a handwritten notation.
Resold privately. Collection arranged by E. Shaw.
Martin looked at Leo.
“Evelyn Shaw may know where the watch is.”
“Then we find her.”
Samuel hesitated.
“There is one more thing.”
He reached into the cabinet and removed a photograph.
It showed Victor standing outside a bank with a woman in a dark coat.
The woman was holding a leather portfolio.
On the back of the photograph was a date from six months earlier and a sentence written in Samuel's hand.
The person Victor trusts most is not his attorney.
Leo studied the woman's face.
He had seen her before.
Not in a business meeting.
Not at the estate.
At his father's funeral.
She had stood at the back of the church, wearing a dark coat and carrying a leather portfolio.
And when Leo had turned to look at her, she had slipped out before the service ended.
Samuel watched recognition spread across his face.
“You know her?”
Leo nodded slowly.
“I saw her at the funeral.”
“Then you should know what I found out after that photograph was taken.”
Samuel opened a drawer and removed a bank statement.
The account belonged to Northstar Residential Holdings.
A transfer of $4.2 million had been made three days before Dominic died.
The recipient was a private trust.
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The trust's beneficiary was listed as a five-year-old child.
Willow Reed.
