Chapter 5 - THE RECEIPT FROM EXIT 42
My hands were steady as I pulled the waterproof plastic sleeve from behind the discarded bronze plaque, though my heart was hammering against my ribs.
Inside the sleeve was a cream Bellweather House stationery envelope, sealed with wax and marked in Rebecca’s unmistakable, graceful handwriting: For Tom — If I don’t make it home from Dayton.
Behind me in the office doorway, Arthur stopped dead in his tracks.
“What is that?” Arthur demanded, his voice pitched high and tight. “Give me that, Tom. That belongs to the company archives.”
“It has a purple-footed turtle drawn on the corner, Arthur,” I said without looking at him. “And it was taped behind the bronze plaque in the foyer—the plaque you ordered your crew to rip down this afternoon so your buyer wouldn’t ask questions about Rebecca.”
I tore open the plastic sleeve and broke the wax seal on the envelope.
Inside were two items: a folded letter written on yellow legal paper, and a faded thermal cash-register receipt from a small auto-repair garage located off Interstate 70, Exit 42—halfway between Columbus and Dayton.
I unfolded the yellow legal page first. It was dated August 14th of last year—the morning Rebecca died.
Tom, she had written, her pen strokes hurried and sharp. I’m writing this in the cellar office at Bellweather before I get on I-70 to meet the state auditors in Dayton. Keep Sophie close tonight. I just found out why the riverfront construction accounts are short six hundred thousand dollars. Arthur didn’t pay the masonry contractors with our loan—he wired the money to an offshore gaming account in Macau, and Claire Whitmore falsified the kitchen vendor invoices to cover it up.
My vision blurred for a second at the sight of my wife’s handwriting, speaking to me from across fourteen months of grief. I forced myself to keep reading.
When I confronted Arthur in the cellar ten minutes ago, he begged me not to go to you or the police until Monday. While we were arguing, I saw his mechanic, Gary Vance’s cousin from the salvage yard, kneeling beside my car in the employee alley by the dumpsters. He claimed he was just picking up scrap metal, but when I started my car to pull around to the front, the brake pedal felt spongy. I’m going to take the slow back road to Dayton and have a highway mechanic check the lines at Exit 42 before I go to the auditor’s office. I hid my jewelry bag in the safe and slipped this behind my plaque in case Arthur tries to wipe the office computers. I love you and Soph more than life.
The cellar hallway went so quiet I could hear the hum of the wine refrigerators through the brick walls.
Slowly, I lifted my head and looked at the brother-in-law I had welcomed into my home every Thanksgiving for eighteen years. The man who had stood beside me at Rebecca’s graveside in the pouring rain, holding an umbrella over Sophie’s head while the priest read the prayers.
“The Highway Patrol report said her brakes failed in heavy rain when traffic stopped near Springfield,” I whispered, my voice shaking with a rage I didn’t know a human body could hold. “They ruled it an accidental mechanical failure caused by a rusted brake-line fitting.”
“It was an accident!” Arthur shouted, backing into the office until the backs of his thighs hit the mahogany desk. Sweat was pouring down his temples now. “Look at that receipt in your hand, Tom! She stopped at Exit 42! If she stopped at a mechanic, why didn’t she get it fixed?!”
I looked down at the faded thermal receipt clipped to the bottom of Rebecca’s letter.
Except it wasn’t a receipt from August 14th.
It was a credit card receipt dated August 12th—two days before the crash—made out to Whitmore & Vance Properties, for the purchase of three gallons of commercial hydraulic brake fluid and a flaring tool from an auto-supply depot at Exit 42. Rebecca hadn’t stopped at Exit 42 on the day she died; she had found this receipt in Arthur’s desk drawer that morning, proving they had bought the tools to tamper with her car forty-eight hours in advance.
She had never made it to Exit 42. Because the pileup that killed her happened at Mile Marker 51—nine miles before the exit.
“You killed your own sister,” I said, taking a slow step into the office.
“No!” Claire screamed, pressing her back against the brick wall beside the wine racks and ripping the gold compass necklace right off her neck, throwing it onto the desk as if it were burning her skin. “I didn’t know he touched her car! I swear to God, Mr. Mercer, I only helped him cook the vendor spreadsheets! When Rebecca came in that morning and said she was driving to the state auditor’s office in Dayton, I went upstairs to manage the lunch rush! Arthur went out to the alley alone!”
“You lying little—” Arthur lunged toward Claire, his hands outstretched.
Before he could reach her, he slammed the heavy oak door of the cellar office shut right in my face and threw the interior brass deadbolt.
“Dad!” Sophie cried from the bottom of the stairs as the heavy wood thudded shut.
May you like
Through the small wired-glass window set into the upper half of the office door, I saw Arthur grab Claire by the wrist while reaching beneath the mahogany desk with his free hand—pulling out a heavy steel crowbar left behind by the demolition crew that had removed Rebecca’s plaque.
And at the back of the cellar office was the freight elevator that led directly up to the dark loading dock behind the river levee.
