Chapter 11 - UNDER THE FLOOR
Police surrounded the old garage before Ethan reached it. He insisted on going inside with the lead detective; Elena came with him because Rosa’s photographs might identify what they found.
The garage smelled of cold concrete and old oil. Ethan remembered polishing his father’s car there on summer mornings. Now its parking space was empty.
Vivian stood near a workbench, unhurt, with two officers beside her. She reached for Ethan, but he stopped several feet away.
“Where’s Julian?”
She pointed to a narrow door behind the shelves. “He went down there. I heard him moving boxes.”
The door opened onto steps leading to a storage cellar. At the bottom, they found ledgers, bank statements, and a metal cash box. Julian was gone. A second stairway rose toward the garden.
“Seal the exits,” the detective ordered.
Elena opened the oldest ledger with gloved hands. Payments from the children’s trust had been sent to an account Julian controlled. Each page was marked with a date. The last entry came two days before Ethan’s father died.
Beside it was a note in a different hand: HE FOUND OUT.
Vivian sat down heavily.
“Tell him,” Elena said.
Vivian stared at the floor. “His father came home after the crash.”
Ethan’s voice was rough. “Rosa was right.”
“He’d driven off the road because his brakes failed. He managed to get the car back here. He knew Julian had been taking money, and he believed Julian had tampered with the car.”
“What happened in this garage?”
“Julian begged him not to call the police. They argued. Your father fell against the workbench.” Tears filled her eyes. “He was alive when I went to get help. When I came back, Julian told me he’d stopped breathing.”
“You didn’t call an ambulance?”
“I tried. Julian took the phone. He said the police would think we’d done it together.”
Ethan backed away from her.
“You let them tell me he died on the road.”
“I was afraid.”
A sharp sound came from the garden stairwell.
The detective drew his weapon. Ethan turned just as Julian stepped into view at the top of the stairs. In one hand he held a dark folder. In the other, Noah’s red camera.
May you like
“It’s time you saw what the boy filmed,” Julian said.
Then he dropped the camera down the stairwell and ran.
