The name on the account was Rebecca Wilson.
My father's older sister.
The woman I had mourned twelve years earlier.
I remembered the funeral with painful clarity. Rain had struck the church windows all afternoon. My father had stood beside the closed casket with his shoulders shaking. I had never seen him cry that way before.
The official story was simple.
Rebecca's boat had exploded during a storm off the coast of Maine.
Pieces of the vessel had been recovered.
Her coat had been found.
There had been enough evidence for authorities to declare her dead.
Her body had never been recovered.
My mother had spent weeks afterward telling people Rebecca had always been troubled.
“She was running from something,” Mom had said.
Now Detective Grant was showing me an account opened fourteen years earlier in my name, with Rebecca listed as its beneficiary.
The opening deposit had been $50,000.
Two years later, three days before Rebecca supposedly died, another $700,000 had entered the account.
Millions had moved through it afterward.
Property sales.
Investment distributions.
Payments from companies I had never heard of.
Every transaction carried my name.
“I didn't do this,” I said.
Detective Grant nodded.
“I believe you.”
“Then why was it opened?”
“That is what we're going to find out.”
She asked whether I remembered signing financial papers when I was nineteen.
I did.
My father had come to my college apartment with a thick stack of documents.
He had told me they were related to an education fund my grandfather had established.
I had been studying for an exam and wanted to get back to my notes.
He pointed to the signature lines.
I signed.
I never read the pages.
“Did you receive the fifty thousand dollars?”
“No.”
“Did your father control your mail?”
“At the time, yes.”
Detective Grant wrote something down.
“He may have used your identity to create the account.”
My phone rang.
The number was hidden.
Grant motioned for me to answer on speaker.
“Hello?”
At first there was only wind.
Then my mother's voice.
“Emily, you need to stop this.”
“Where are you?”
“Your father is trying to fix everything.”
“By transferring another $2.4 million?”
“That money doesn't belong to you.”
“The account is in my name.”
“That doesn't make it yours.”
Detective Grant leaned closer.
“Mrs. Wilson, this is Detective Grant. Tell us your location.”
Mom did not answer.
Instead, she gave a bitter laugh.
“You have no idea what you're interfering with.”
“You forged Emily's signature.”
Mom ignored the accusation.
“Your father is protecting this family.”
“From what?”
“From consequences.”
“Where is he?”
“At the marina.”
“Who is he meeting?”
Silence.
Then Mom said something that made every hair on my arms rise.
“If you see Rebecca, don't believe anything she says.”
The call ended.
I stared at Detective Grant.
“My mother said Rebecca.”
“I heard her.”
“She told me Rebecca was dead.”
Detective Grant's expression remained neutral.
“She may have believed Rebecca was dead.”
“She said if I see her.”
“Yes.”
A uniformed officer entered the room.
“Harbor patrol located Robert Wilson.”
“Where?”
“Pier fourteen.”
“Is he alone?”
The officer shook his head.
“He's with a woman.”
Detective Grant stood immediately.
Fifteen minutes later, we were at the marina.
Police vehicles surrounded the entrance.
Dad stood at the end of the pier.
Beside him was a tall woman with silver hair.
She wore a dark blue coat.
My hands started trembling.
I remembered Rebecca wearing that coat.
She had loved it.
Mom had teased her about keeping it long after the style had changed.
The boat beside them had its engine running.
Then officers moved in.
Dad raised his hands.
The woman vanished.
I watched through the windshield.
Officers boarded the boat.
They searched below deck.
They found nothing.
The woman was gone.
There was no second boat.
No obvious route away.
Detective Grant approached my father.
He pointed toward the water.
Then she looked toward the black document case at his feet.
An officer opened it.
Dad lunged.
Three officers pulled him back.
“You don't understand what's in there!”
Detective Grant began removing folders.
She opened one.
Her eyes moved across the page.
Then she looked directly at me.
“Your father has been detained.”
“Where's the woman?”
“We're searching.”
“Was she Rebecca?”
Dad said nothing.
“What was in the case?”
Grant closed the door of the police vehicle where I sat.
“Original bank records. Property documents. Insurance files.”
She paused.
“And a private trust agreement.”
“My grandfather's?”
“Yes.”
“He died sixteen years ago.”
“I know.”
She handed me the first page.
My name appeared beneath his.
I read the next paragraph.
Then I stopped.
“How much was the trust worth?”
“More than eight million dollars when it was created.”
My mouth went dry.
“Who inherited it?”
“Fifty percent was assigned to you.”
I looked at her.
“The other half?”
“Rebecca.”
I could not speak.
“My parents told me Grandfather left everything to Dad.”
“They were wrong.”
“No.”
Grant's voice softened.
“They lied.”
I looked again at the document.
Dad had been appointed temporary trustee until I turned twenty-five.
I was thirty-three.
“He was supposed to transfer it to me eight years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
I stared at the papers.
The money from the wedding suddenly looked different.
The account my family had treated as their emergency fund.
The companies they had created.
The property.
The investments.
The transfers.
They hadn't only been using my salary.
They had been controlling my inheritance.
“How much of my inheritance is left?”
“We don't know yet.”
I remembered all the times Dad had told me not to become obsessed with money.
All the times Mom had said Jackson needed help more than I did.
All the times I had been made to feel selfish for wanting to protect what I had earned.
Now I wondered whether they had been trying to keep me from looking at what had been mine all along.
“The Greenwich house,” I said.
Grant looked at me.
“Was it purchased with trust money?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
“And Jackson knew?”
“We don't know yet.”
Dad was being escorted toward another police vehicle.
He saw me.
“Emily!”
I stepped out.
“Where is Rebecca?”
He stopped.
His face changed.
“Let me explain.”
“Is she alive?”
He looked at me for several seconds.
Then he said it.
“Yes.”
The word broke something inside me.
“You made us bury an empty coffin.”
“It was the only way to keep her safe.”
“Safe from whom?”
Dad looked toward the black case.
“Your grandfather.”
“He was dead.”
“Some of the people he worked with weren't.”
Detective Grant stepped beside me.
“What happened to Rebecca?”
Dad shook his head.
“I won't tell you.”
“She may be connected to financial fraud.”
“No.”
His voice became firmer.
“She was trying to stop it.”
“Then who initiated the $2.4 million transfer?”
Dad looked at me.
“Your mother.”
I almost laughed.
“Mom said you were fixing it.”
“She wanted you to believe that.”
“Why would she transfer money to an account naming Rebecca?”
“Because the beneficiary designation is false.”
“What does that mean?”
“The money would have moved through another company.”
“Whose company?”
He looked toward the distant villa.
“Your mother's.”
The answer left me speechless.
Dad explained that Mom had controlled several private companies for years.
She had used accounts connected to my identity to move trust funds without drawing attention to herself.
At first, he had helped her.
Then the amounts became larger.
Eventually Rebecca discovered what was happening.
Six months earlier, she had contacted Dad.
She had threatened to expose everything.
Mom panicked.
“Rebecca has been alive all this time?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Canada. Then Europe.”
“Why didn't she contact me?”
Dad looked away.
“She did.”
“No.”
“She sent letters.”
I remembered Mom collecting my mail.
Even after I moved out, she sometimes told me important letters had accidentally gone to her house.
“She took them,” I whispered.
Dad nodded.
“Your mother destroyed them.”
My throat tightened.
“She let me believe my aunt was dead.”
“She believed it was safer.”
“For whom?”
He had no answer.
Detective Grant stepped closer.
“Where is Rebecca now?”
Dad looked toward the marina office.
“She entered through the side door while officers were arriving.”
Police searched the building.
They found an employee exit opening onto the parking lot.
A blue sedan had left minutes earlier.
Rebecca was gone.
Dad was placed in the police car.
Before the door closed, he called to me.
“The black case contains a red folder.”
I stepped closer.
“What's in it?”
“Everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“Read it before you believe anything your mother tells you.”
The car door shut.
Detective Grant returned to the case.
There was no red folder.
We checked every document.
Nothing.
Dad insisted Rebecca had taken it.
“The folder contains the complete trust history,” he said through the car window. “There are recordings too.”
“What recordings?”
“Rebecca recorded conversations before she disappeared.”
“What do they prove?”
“One identifies who ordered the fraudulent transfers.”
“And the other?”
“Why your grandfather removed your mother from his will.”
I stared at him.
“What else?”
Dad hesitated.
“There's a letter.”
“To me?”
“Yes.”
“What does it say?”
“I never opened it.”
“Why not?”
“Rebecca told me you had to read it yourself.”
Detective Grant's phone rang.
She answered.
Her expression tightened.
She listened for several seconds.
Then she looked at me.
“The bank just contacted us.”
“What happened?”
“Someone entered a downtown branch using your identification.”
“That’s impossible.”
“They opened your safe-deposit box.”
My stomach dropped.
“I don't have a safe-deposit box.”
“You do.”
“When?”
“When you were nineteen.”
The same year as the mysterious account.
“Who opened it?”
“A woman claiming to be Emily Wilson.”
She showed me the security photograph.
The woman wore sunglasses and a scarf.
But I recognized her immediately.
My mother.
She was carrying a red folder.
Behind her stood Jackson.
I stared at the image.
“He helped her.”
“Yes.”
My phone buzzed.
Detective Grant received another alert.
Two plane tickets had been purchased using my credit card.
One was in Mom's name.
The other was in mine.
“The flight leaves in less than three hours,” Grant said.
“Where?”
She gave me the destination.
Then she enlarged the passport photograph attached to my ticket.
The woman in the photograph wasn't me.
It wasn't Mom either.
It was Rebecca.
My dead aunt.
She was preparing to leave the country under my identity.
And she had the red folder.
Click Here to continue read next: PART4: The Red Folder Led Us to the House My Brother Thought He Was Buying, Where Burned Records Exposed a Truth About My Birth
The Wedding Bill That Should Have Ended With a Celebration Instead Opened a Door to Something My Family Had Hidden for Years
Part 3 of 8
