Chapter 9 - THE RED LEDGER
Elena returned to the mansion the next morning, not as an employee but as someone who had chosen to come.
She found Margaret in the conservatory.
“What's the red ledger?”
Margaret's face changed.
“Where did you see that?”
“In my father's notebook.”
Margaret sat slowly.
“Your father gave me a red ledger before the crash. It contained payments Victor had been making to people inside the company. I hid it in the old greenhouse because I thought the estate was being watched.”
“Why didn't you tell the police?”
“I was afraid it would implicate me. Some of the payments went through an account I controlled.”
Elena's expression hardened.
“Did you take money?”
“No. Victor used the account without my knowledge. But I signed the original authorization years earlier. I should have checked.”
“Where is it?”
Margaret rose. “I'll show you.”
They crossed the garden to the abandoned greenhouse. The glass panes were clouded with age, and vines had climbed the metal frame. Margaret moved a stack of empty pots and revealed a small floor hatch.
Beneath it was a red leather ledger.
Elena opened it.
The entries recorded payments to contractors, security personnel, a private investigator, and a hospital administrator. Several payments were dated after Julian's crash. One was made six months earlier, shortly before Thomas Walsh died.
The recipient's name was unfamiliar.
Dr. Simon Reed.
Elena read the amount twice.
“Who is he?”
Margaret shook her head. “I don't know.”
A voice came from the greenhouse entrance.
“I do.”
Julian stood in the doorway with Daniel.
“Dr. Reed was the physician who treated your father during his final illness,” he said.
Elena's blood went cold.
“My father's doctor?”
Julian nodded. “He worked at the private clinic Victor funded.”
Margaret looked sick.
“Are you saying Victor was involved in Thomas's death?”
“I'm saying we need to find out.”
Elena clutched the ledger.
Her father had died of complications from a respiratory infection. The doctor had told her there was nothing more they could do. She had believed him.
Now she wondered whether the man who treated her father had been paid by the same people who had tried to kill Julian.
Daniel photographed every page and secured the ledger.
“We'll give this to the investigators,” he said.
Elena nodded, but her mind was elsewhere.
May you like
She had come to the mansion believing her father had left behind evidence of a crime.
She was beginning to understand he might have been a victim of it.
