Chapter 4 - THE MORNING AUDIT
The sun hadn't crested the horizon when I pulled my gray sedan into the gravel lot of the original coastal inn.
The morning air was biting, smelling sharply of salt water, rotting kelp, and damp pine needles. The old wooden sign creaked in the offshore wind, its faded gold lettering—Harrison’s Coastal Inn, Est. 1968—peeling slightly at the corners. For thirty-two years, I had unlocked these front doors before the sun came up, brewing the first pot of coffee for the fishermen and early-morning travelers who stopped by before the highway bypass was built.
Today, nobody was here.
William was sitting in the passenger seat of my car, staring straight ahead through the windshield, his hands clenched tightly in his lap. He hadn't spoken a single word since we left the house at six o'clock. The bravado of the gala was entirely gone, replaced by the hollow panic of a man whose house of cards was collapsing in slow motion.
"Get out, William," I said, switching off the ignition.
He swallowed hard, pushing open his door and following me across the wet gravel like a dog on a short leash.
We walked past the main office, down the narrow pine-paneled corridor, and stopped at the heavy oak door marked Private - Authorized Personnel Only. This was our administrative office—the room where William kept his financial ledgers, and where I had found Vanessa’s lipstick on a wineglass eleven months ago.
I pulled a heavy brass key from my coat pocket.
It wasn't the digital keycard William used for his modern downtown offices. It was the original brass mortise key my father had fitted into this door back in 1970, before digital locks existed, before lawyers and investors ruined everything we had built.
I slid the key into the lock. It turned with a satisfying, metallic click.
The office smelled of old paper, leather, and stale pipe tobacco—my father’s lingering ghost. The mahogany desk sat beneath a tall window overlooking the rocky Maine coastline.
"Unlock the bottom wall safe, William," I commanded, gesturing toward the brass dial set into the wainscoting behind the desk.
William hesitated, his shoulder muscles tightening under his tailored suit jacket. "Eleanor, let’s be reasonable. We can call Patricia, we can restructure the $53 million deal so Vanessa gets pushed out, and we can—"
"Unlock the safe," I repeated, my voice dropping an octave, carrying an authority that brooked no argument. "Or I call the state police right now and report a missing person from June 1994."
Slowly, reluctantly, William shuffled around the desk. He knelt on the worn Persian rug, his fingers hovering over the brass dial. He spun it left, right, left—pausing at numbers I couldn't see. With a heavy, muffled clunk, the iron door swung open.
Inside weren't corporate stock certificates or tax returns.
There was a stack of shoeboxes tied with faded yellow ribbon, a rusted metal tin containing old photographs, and a single manila envelope stamped with the logo of the Portland General Hospital Records Department.
"Take them out," I said.
William reached inside, his hands trembling so badly he dropped the manila envelope onto the floor. Papers spilled across the rug.
I knelt down, brushing his shoulder aside, and gathered the scattered sheets. The first document was a hospital admission sheet for Catherine Castellano, dated June 12, 1994.
The second document was an affidavit signed by Arthur Castellano—my father.
I read it aloud under the dim light of the desk lamp.
‘I, Arthur Castellano, being of sound mind, attest that my son-in-law, William Harrison, utilized funds from the inn's primary operating account to coerce Dr. Harold Vance into falsifying birth and adoption records for my grandson, born June 14, 1994. Furthermore, William Harrison threatened my daughter Catherine with institutionalization if she ever returned to claim her child.’
My breath hitched. I looked up at William, who was cowering against the bookshelves like a beaten animal.
"You didn't just take her baby, William," I whispered, horror washing over me in cold waves. "You threatened to lock her in an asylum."
"She was unstable!" William blurted out, his voice cracking with defensive hysteria. "If your father had found out we were having an affair—if the town had known I knocked up my pregnant wife's nineteen-year-old sister while we were trying to secure the bank loan for the second inn—our entire lives would have been over! We would have lost everything!"
"So you stole her son," I said, standing up slowly, towering over him as he knelt on the floor. "And you used my father's land, my father's inn, and my labor to pay for your silence."
Before William could answer, the office door swung open with a loud bang.
Patricia stood in the doorway, breathless, holding an open tablet in her hand. Her face was stark white.
"Eleanor," Patricia panted, looking from me to the scattered papers on the floor. "You need to look at this right now. A reporter from the Boston Globe just called my office. They received an anonymous tip about Harrison Coastal Hotels."
"What kind of tip?" I asked, stepping away from William.
"Not about financial fraud," Patricia said, her voice shaking. "About a missing birth record from 1994. And the reporter says they found a young man in New York—a thirty-two-year-old man who just ran a commercial DNA database and found a direct biological match to Catherine Castellano... and to William Harrison."
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William froze on the rug.
And then, from the hallway outside the office, we heard the front door of the inn open, followed by the sound of firm, unhurried footsteps walking across the hardwood floor.
