Chapter 4 - THE LOCKED ARMOIRE AND THE RECORDING
I swept Nathan’s letter, the brass boat key, and the fraudulent trusteeship deed straight out of the leather binder and shoved them deep into the inner zippered compartment of my oversized canvas tote bag.
Out in the hallway, the heavy footsteps of Grant and Melissa were only thirty feet away, rounding the corner from the passenger elevator lobby.
If I stepped out into the corridor now, they would see me coming straight out of Melissa’s suite—and Grant was sixty pounds heavier than me with a temper that had already sent me to the hospital once.
I darted back to the doorway, pulled Lily and our two rolling suitcases straight inside Suite 414 with me, and let the heavy door click shut just as Grant’s voice echoed down the hall outside:
“—don’t care what you told her at the table, Melissa! If Claire went up to 412 to pack her bags, I’m taking her car keys until after we sign the trust transfer with your brother at eleven o’clock!”
They weren’t walking past to Suite 412 first.
Wait—the electronic lock on the outside of Suite 414 beeped green as Melissa swiped her keycard!
I grabbed Lily’s hand, wheeled our two suitcases into the adjoining dressing alcove behind the bathroom, and stepped inside the walk-in cedar luggage closet, pulling the louvered bi-fold door nearly shut behind us and pressing my finger lightly to my lips.
Lily didn’t make a single sound. She hugged her stuffed bunny tightly against her chest and buried her face against my hip as the suite door swung open ten feet away.
“Why is the deadbolt latch flipped out?” Melissa asked sharply as she and Grant stepped into the bedroom.
“Housekeeping probably propped it while they were checking towels,” Grant muttered, walking straight over to the mahogany desk. “Where’s your brother? Greg was supposed to be back from the dock five minutes ago with the notary stamp.”
“He’s bringing Mother up in the service elevator so she doesn’t have to walk the long hall,” Melissa said, tossing her cream leather handbag onto the bed. “Stop pacing, Grant. Claire isn’t going to find out about the Carter Trust until after the wire clears to Grand Cayman on Tuesday. Even if she drives back to Charlotte today, she doesn’t even know her father left the commercial building in that bond.”
Through the narrow slat of the louvered closet door, I watched Grant run a hand over his mouth. When he stopped beside the desk and noticed the leather binder sitting slightly crooked on the blotter, his shoulders tensed.
“Wait a second,” Grant said slowly, flipping open the cream leather binder.
His face went dead white.
“Melissa,” he breathed, spinning around toward her. “Where is the trusteeship deed? And where did you put the canvas pouch Greg pulled out of Nathan’s old storage locker in Savannah yesterday?!”
Melissa froze halfway to the vanity mirror. “They were right there inside the binder when we went down to breakfast! Greg brought the pouch from Savannah so we could burn Nathan’s letter before Mother saw it!”
“Mother doesn’t know about Nathan’s boat?!” Grant hissed, stepping toward her and lowering his voice to a panicked snarl. “Keep your voice down! Mother knows Owen is mine—she helped us cover up the paternity clinic bill when Nathan was at sea—but she still thinks Nathan’s boat went down because of a fuel leak! If she finds out you and your brother Greg tampered with the bilge pump at Hatteras Inlet because Nathan was going to cut you out of his Coast Guard survivor’s pension, she’ll turn on both of us!”
Inside the dark cedar closet, my hand went to my mouth.
Grant hadn’t been the one on the dock at Hatteras Inlet when his brother drowned—Melissa and her disgraced brother Greg had sabotaged Nathan’s boat to keep Nathan from divorcing her and exposing the affair, and then told Grant afterward when it was too late for Grant to back out without losing his own son and his career!
“Wait,” Grant said suddenly, his eyes narrowing as he looked down at the carpet by the bathroom alcove—where the wet rubber wheel of my rolling suitcase had left two faint damp tracks from the hallway fountain.
Slowly, Grant turned his head toward the louvered doors of the walk-in closet.
Before he could take two steps toward the alcove, the suite door clicked open again—and in walked Judith, leaning on her silver-tipped cane, followed by Melissa’s brother Greg Vance in his blue sailing jacket, wearing my late father’s gold Patek Philippe watch on his left wrist.
“What on earth are you two shouting about?” Judith demanded, shutting the suite door behind her and frowning at Grant. “And why did the front desk clerk just ask me on the way through the lobby if Claire needed help carrying her luggage to her car after she printed out the master folio for the Carter Trust?!”
The room went utterly silent.
“She printed the master folio?” Greg Vance repeated, his hand dropping immediately to the heavy brass notary embosser in his jacket pocket. “Grant, my name—N. Bennett—is on the marina boutique slip on that folio! And if she got a duplicate keycard from the front desk while we were outside...”
All four of them turned at once and stared straight at the louvered doors of the dressing alcove.
I didn’t wait for Grant to yank the closet door open and trap my eight-year-old daughter in a corner.
Earlier, when I had pulled our suitcases into the dressing alcove behind the bathroom, I had noticed the secondary housekeeping linen door inside the back wall of the closet—the connecting service door that linked Suite 414 to the empty foyer of Suite 412 next door!
With my left hand, I threw the brass thumb-turn on the connecting door, pushed Lily and our bags through into our own suite, and slammed the heavy soundproofed connecting door shut, throwing the steel security bolt on our side one second before Grant’s fist crashed against the wood from Suite 414!
“Claire!” Grant roared through the double-insulated door. “Open this door right now! Give me that paper, Claire, I’m warning you!”
I didn’t answer him.
As I grabbed our two suitcases and rushed toward the hallway door of Suite 412, my eye caught Grant’s open leather briefcase sitting on the luggage rack by our door—where he had left his laptop and a stack of bank statements before going down to breakfast.
Sitting right on top of his briefcase was a bright blue plastic pediatric prescription bottle from Charlotte Compounding Pharmacy—prescribed not to Owen, and not to Grant, but to Lily Bennett.
Wait. Lily wasn’t taking any prescription medication.
I snatched the blue bottle off his briefcase as I pulled the hallway door open. The label read: Diphenhydramine Elixir — Pediatric Sedative, 12.5mg. Prescriber: Dr. A. Sterling.
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Why did Grant have a bottle of liquid pediatric sedative in his briefcase with Lily’s name on it—filled three days ago, right before we left for Charleston?
And why was there a half-empty juice dropper sitting beside it on the tray, smelling faintly of the exact orange juice Grant had poured into Lily’s cup at the breakfast table on Friday and Saturday morning—making my energetic little girl "unusually quiet and tired" all weekend?!
