Chapter 6 - THE ACCIDENT THAT WASN’T
Grant arrived twenty minutes later with Detective Reed.
Caleb handed over the photograph.
Reed read the back twice.
“Your father worked for Harrington?”
Caleb shook his head.
“Not Grant.”
Grant frowned.
“My father?”
Caleb looked at him.
“Apparently.”
Grant’s father, Charles Harrington, had built the original fortune.
Oil transport.
Industrial equipment.
Land development.
He had died fifteen years earlier.
Grant searched old employee records.
Caleb’s father appeared immediately.
Thomas Miller.
Maintenance supervisor.
Grant leaned back.
“He worked here for eight years.”
Caleb’s jaw tightened.
“You never knew?”
“I was in college most of that time.”
Reed asked, “How did Thomas die?”
“Tractor rollover,” Caleb said.
Grant looked at the file.
“No.”
Caleb turned.
“What?”
Grant read slowly.
“Company report says industrial vehicle malfunction.”
“That’s the same thing.”
Grant shook his head.
“No. The location isn’t.”
He turned the screen.
Thomas Miller had died at an abandoned Harrington chemical facility forty miles away.
Caleb stared.
“My mother told me it happened on a farm.”
Grant looked uncomfortable.
“Maybe she was protecting you.”
“From what?”
Nobody answered.
Reed opened archived insurance files.
Thomas Miller had filed an internal complaint three weeks before his death.
Unauthorized chemical disposal.
Falsified safety reports.
Bribed inspectors.
Caleb read the page twice.
“Who did he accuse?”
Reed scrolled.
The file had been redacted.
But one handwritten note remained.
C.H. aware.
Grant went still.
“Charles Harrington.”
His father.
Caleb pushed back from the desk.
“My father died after threatening your father?”
“We don’t know that.”
“It looks pretty damn clear.”
Grant stood.
“I was nineteen.”
“I didn’t say you killed him.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
Caleb looked at him.
“I’m thinking rich families bury a lot of things.”
Grant flinched.
Before he could answer, Reed’s phone rang.
He listened.
Then looked toward them.
“They found Derek.”
Vanessa’s driver had been discovered inside a motel room twenty miles outside Boston.
Dead.
Gunshot wound.
A pistol beside his hand.
Suicide note on the desk.
Vanessa’s attorney immediately claimed proof.
Derek had acted alone.
Reed disagreed.
“People who commit suicide usually don’t break three fingers first.”
Caleb stared at him.
“Tortured?”
“Looks like it.”
Grant’s phone buzzed.
A text.
Unknown number.
He opened it.
A photograph loaded.
Vanessa sitting in the back seat of a car.
Beside her was the scarred man.
Below the image:
SHE IS NOT THE ONE IN CHARGE.
Grant looked at Caleb.
Caleb felt the room grow colder.
May you like
Because if Vanessa wasn’t running the plan, someone else was still out there.
And that person knew exactly where they were.
