Chapter 3 - THE RAILROAD WATCH
At the mention of Michael's name, the air inside the private dining room seemed to freeze solid.
Everyone in our family knew the story of Michael Harrison, the youngest of the three Harrison brothers.
Eleven years ago, during a bitter November snowstorm, Michael's pickup truck had skidded off an unlit bridge outside Rockford and plunged into the Pecatonica River.
The river was high and fast; his body was never recovered, and two years later the state declared him legally dead.
I looked down at the photograph in Margaret's trembling hand.
The little girl on the porch in Lake Geneva looked about four years old when that picture was taken seven years ago—which meant she had been born right around the time Michael vanished.
"Daniel," Margaret rasped, her hand still clamped around my wrist for support as she stared at her oldest son. "Where did that child get the watch your father left to Michael?"
Daniel swallowed hard, his eyes darting toward his brother Robert at the back of the room.
Robert had stood up slowly from his chair, his napkin falling onto his plate.
For thirty years, Robert had been the quiet brother—the chief estimator at Harrison Construction who worked in the basement office, never argued, and did whatever Daniel told him to do.
"Daniel," Robert said, his voice tight and unnatural across the silent tables. "Don't."
Wait.
I looked from Robert's pale face back to my husband.
"She isn't my daughter," Daniel blurted out, the pride that had kept his mouth shut finally cracking under the weight of sixty staring guests and his mother's horror. "I told the realtor she was mine so nobody in Lake Geneva would ask questions about her last name!"
Rebecca stared at him, her lipsticked mouth slightly open. "Then why were you paying her mortgage out of your wife's retirement account?"
"Because if I didn't keep the girl's mother quiet in Wisconsin, she was going to go to the county prosecutor in Rockford!" Daniel shouted, slamming his palm against the white tablecloth so hard the silverware jumped.
My older son, Mark, grabbed Daniel by the lapel of his tuxedo jacket.
"Go to the prosecutor about what, Dad?" Mark demanded, his voice shaking with anger. "What happened the night Uncle Michael's truck went off that bridge?"
"Let go of me, Mark!" Daniel tried to pull back, his face mottled crimson. "You don't know what it took to keep this company alive during the recession! If that bridge contract had defaulted—"
"Wait," I said, a cold, sickening realization cutting through the noise in my head.
I stepped between Mark and Daniel, picking up the closing file Mrs. Vance had brought me.
When my forensic accountant had traced the retirement withdrawals last week, there had been two separate recurring transfers every month on the fifteenth.
One went to the mortgage company in Lake Geneva.
The other—for three thousand dollars a month—went to a small pharmacy and clinic trust in Walworth County, Wisconsin.
"You weren't paying off a blackmailer, Daniel," I said slowly, looking at the tax identification number on the back of the Lake Geneva utility escrow. "The woman living in that house never cashed a single check in her own name. Every utility bill is listed under the estate of Sarah Miller."
Rebecca blinked. "Who is Sarah Miller?"
From the back of the room, Robert's wife, Diane, let out a sharp cry and covered her face with both hands.
"Sarah Miller was Michael's fiancée," Margaret whispered, sinking back into her chair as I held her shoulders. "She died of complications six months after the little girl was born. We didn't even know Michael had a baby until Sarah's sister brought the child to the construction office seven years ago."
My heart stopped.
"You knew?" I looked down at my mother-in-law—the woman I had bathed, dressed, and fed every day for eighteen months after her stroke.
Margaret wouldn't meet my eyes; a single tear tracked through the powder on her lined cheek.
"Not until three months ago, Patricia," Margaret whispered, her voice breaking. "Right before my eighty-first birthday, a little girl called the house landline while you were at the grocery store. She said she was eleven years old, her name was Clara, and she wanted to know why Uncle Daniel had stopped sending the medicine money for her grandfather."
"Her grandfather?" I repeated, my head spinning. "Michael's father died twenty years ago."
"Not our side of the family," Robert said, walking slowly up the center aisle toward the head table, his shoulders slumped like a man carrying a sack of wet cement. "Sarah's father, Walt Miller. He was the night watchman at the Rockford yard the night Michael's truck went into the river."
Rebecca grabbed her purse and backed toward the door. "You people are insane. All of you. I came here for an anniversary dinner, not a deposition!"
"Sit down, Rebecca," I said, without even looking at her.
To my surprise, my younger son Lucas stepped in front of the double doors and folded his arms across his chest.
Rebecca froze.
"Why were you paying the night watchman's medical bills in Lake Geneva, Daniel?" I asked, turning back to my husband. "And why did the payments stop three months ago—the exact same week you bought Rebecca that red dress and put a down payment on a condo on Lake Shore Drive?"
Daniel's lips trembled.
"Because the old man had dementia, Patricia! For seven years, Sarah's sister used him to squeeze us, claiming Walt saw who cut the brake lines on the company pickup truck the night of the storm!"
A collective gasp tore through the sixty guests in the dining room.
Cut the brake lines.
Margaret let out a low, terrible moan, clutching the front of her blouse.
"Someone cut Michael's brakes?" Mark whispered, staring at his father in horror. "Dad... did you—"
"No!" Daniel shouted, sweat pouring down his temples as he pointed a shaking finger at Rebecca. "I thought I was protecting Robert! Because that pickup truck was registered to Robert, and the night before the crash, Walt saw someone in a yellow company raincoat draining the brake fluid in the Rockford shed!"
"I was in Milwaukee that night!" Robert roared, grabbing the edge of the table. "I only helped you pay off the watchman because you told me you were the one in the shed trying to fake an equipment claim for the insurance money!"
Both brothers froze, staring at each other across the white linen.
For seven years, Daniel had believed Robert cut the brakes, and Robert had believed Daniel did it.
I looked down at the black velvet box on the table—and at the gold bracelet inside it.
Then I looked at Rebecca Collins, whose face had gone whiter than the tablecloth.
"Rebecca," I said softly, remembering the personnel file I had pulled when I first audited the company payroll five years ago. "Before you transferred to the Chicago office as Daniel's executive assistant... didn't your first W-2 with Harrison Construction come from the Rockford field office eleven years ago?"
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Rebecca didn't say a word.
Instead, she reached into her open purse, pulled out a heavy brass key ring with a Lake Geneva marina tag attached to it, and threw it straight into Daniel's spilled champagne glass—just as the double doors behind Lucas were pushed open by an eleven-year-old girl in that same faded yellow cardigan, holding the cracked railroad watch in her small hand.
