Chapter 8 - THE GIRL AT 412 SYCAMORE LANE
“Claire Whitmore has a sister?” I asked, staring down at the photograph clipped to Rebecca’s green notebook.
In the photo, the young woman in the blue waitress uniform looked to be in her early twenties. She had Claire’s high cheekbones and pale blue eyes, though her expression was soft, tired, and kind—nothing like the brittle arrogance of the general manager who had just been placed in the back of a police cruiser outside.
“Wait a second,” Detective Miller said, leaning over my shoulder to look at the silver sedan parked behind the girl in the photograph. He pulled his notepad from his breast pocket and flipped back several pages. “Mr. Mercer, I know that license plate. A silver 2018 Mercedes C-Class with Ohio plates was the lead car that hydroplaned across the center median on I-70 and triggered the pileup that killed your wife.”
A cold tremor ran through my body.
“Who was driving that silver Mercedes, Detective?” I asked quietly.
“Nobody owned up to it,” Miller said grimly. “By the time troopers reached the scene in the blinding rain, the driver of the silver Mercedes had fled on foot up the embankment. The car was registered to a shell leasing company in Columbus—a company owned by Arthur Vance. Wait right here.”
Detective Miller strode briskly out the front doors into the rain, heading straight for the second police cruiser where Claire Whitmore sat in the backseat.
Through the tall glass windows of the foyer, I watched Miller open the cruiser door and hold Rebecca’s notebook and the photograph in front of Claire’s face.
The moment Claire saw the picture of the girl in the waitress uniform, whatever composure she had left disintegrated completely. She doubled over in the backseat of the patrol car, sobbing so violently her shoulders shook.
Five minutes later, Detective Miller walked back inside, shaking the rain off his coat, his face solemn.
“Sit tight for this, Mr. Mercer,” Miller said, keeping his voice low so Sophie—who had fallen into an exhausted half-sleep against my chest—wouldn’t hear the worst of it. “That girl in the photo is Hannah Whitmore, Claire’s twenty-three-year-old younger sister. Two years ago, Hannah was working as a prep cook at your Dayton restaurant location when she got into a car accident after a double shift. She had traces of prescription painkillers in her system from a wrist injury, and Arthur Vance covered up the police report so the company wouldn’t get sued—then used that felony threat to blackmail both sisters.”
My stomach twisted. “Blackmail them into what?”
“Arthur forced Claire to falsify the vendor invoices at Bellweather House to hide his gambling debts—promising her that if she cooperated and pretended to be his fiancée to give him an alibi, he would tear up the evidence against her little sister,” Miller explained. “And that diamond ring on Claire’s finger? It was part of the cover story so she couldn’t be compelled to testify against him as a spouse once they crossed state lines.”
Wait. Then why had Claire been so cruel to me and Sophie at Table Four tonight?
“When your wife found out about the missing six hundred thousand dollars,” Miller continued, answering the question before I could even ask it, “Rebecca didn’t go to the police first. She hired a private investigator and discovered why Claire was helping Arthur steal. The morning Rebecca died, she was driving to 412 Sycamore Lane in Dayton to give Hannah Whitmore immunity papers from your family’s legal fund—so Hannah and her infant son could move out of Arthur’s reach, and Claire could testify against Arthur without her sister going to prison.”
I closed my eyes, a sharp ache rising in my throat.
That was Rebecca through and through. Even when she discovered she was being robbed, her first instinct had been to rescue the twenty-three-year-old girl Arthur was holding hostage.
“And Arthur found out she was going to Dayton to free Hannah,” I whispered.
“Yes,” Miller said heavily. “Arthur cut Rebecca’s brake lines in the alley here at Bellweather, then drove his leased silver Mercedes ahead of her on I-70 and intentionally slammed on his brakes in front of her at Mile Marker 51 so she couldn’t stop. When Rebecca’s car crashed, Arthur abandoned the silver Mercedes on the highway, got picked up by his cousin Gary on the overpass, and told Claire that Hannah had stolen the leased car and caused the crash that killed Rebecca.”
I stared through the window at Claire sitting in the police cruiser.
For fourteen months, Arthur had convinced Claire that her own little sister had accidentally killed Rebecca on I-70—and that if you, Thomas Mercer, ever discovered the truth about the books or the crash, you would send Hannah to prison for vehicular homicide and put her baby in foster care.
And why had Claire panicked so badly when she saw a man in muddy work boots sitting at Table Four tonight?
“She wasn’t trying to protect her bonus,” I realized aloud, the last piece of the puzzle clicking into place. “Claire didn’t recognize me—she thought I was one of the masonry contractors from the Columbus site who had come here tonight to confront Arthur about the unpaid six-hundred-thousand-dollar construction bill in front of Richard Sterling. She was trying to get me and Sophie out of the building before Arthur saw us and realized his fraud was collapsing!”
Detective Miller nodded slowly. “She just gave a full videotaped statement in the cruiser, Mr. Mercer. She told us exactly where Arthur hid the brake-line tools at his cousin’s salvage yard, and she handed over the encrypted thumb drive with every offshore wire transfer he made. With her testimony, Arthur Vance will never see the outside of a maximum-security prison again. And the prosecutor has already agreed to drop all blackmail charges against Hannah.”
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Inside my shirt pocket, my fingers brushed against Rebecca’s gold compass necklace.
My wife hadn’t died in vain. Even after fourteen months, the trail she had left behind had dismantled her killer’s entire web of lies and saved the innocent girl she had been driving to protect.
