Chapter 4 - The Money Rebecca Followed
Victor Hale’s office was searched the next morning.
His lawyers objected immediately, citing attorney-client privilege.
Detective Morales expected that.
A special review procedure was established so investigators could separate potentially privileged material from evidence unrelated to legitimate legal advice.
Money and power slowed the process.
They did not stop it.
Victor himself arrived at the sheriff’s department voluntarily.
He wore a navy suit and acted offended.
“I advised the Whitmore family for decades.”
Morales answered, “Then you should remember the bridal suite.”
“I attended hundreds of events at that hotel.”
“You entered that room with a missing woman.”
Victor’s expression changed only slightly.
“I don’t recall.”
Morales showed him the footage.
He watched himself walk into the hallway six years earlier.
“I would need context.”
“What context makes this innocent?”
Victor smiled faintly.
“That is a prosecutorial question, Detective.”
He requested counsel.
The interview ended.
Ethan spent the morning with outside forensic accountant Naomi Chen.
Naomi was brought in because company management could no longer trust its own financial records.
Lucas remained locked out of corporate systems.
His attorneys demanded reinstatement.
The board refused.
Naomi began with Northstar Point.
Within hours she found the first discrepancy.
“Your family trust owns it,” she said.
“That’s what I believed.”
“Not anymore.”
Ethan looked up.
“What?”
“Title transferred four years ago to Northstar Development Holdings LLC.”
“Who owns that?”
“We’re tracing it.”
“Who authorized the transfer?”
Naomi rotated the screen.
Lucas Whitmore.
Margaret Whitmore.
And Ethan.
He stared at his signature.
“I never signed this.”
Naomi zoomed in.
“It may be a digital signature.”
“Then it was used without permission.”
“That has to be proven.”
“What about the trust?”
“There’s an amendment.”
She opened another file.
The amendment permitted sale or encumbrance of Northstar Point upon approval of three family fiduciaries.
Margaret.
Lucas.
Ethan.
The document was dated two weeks after Rebecca disappeared.
Ethan’s stomach turned.
“I didn’t sign this either.”
Naomi looked at him.
“Someone wanted your wife removed before they changed the trust.”
He called Claire.
She arrived with Mia after school.
The postponed wedding had already become national entertainment news.
Photographers waited outside the resort gates.
Claire looked exhausted.
Mia carried a notebook and refused to let go of her hand.
Ethan explained Northstar Point.
Claire nodded slowly.
“Rebecca was investigating it.”
“How do you know?”
“She showed me an appraisal.”
“What appraisal?”
“Northstar was worth almost forty million even then. Lucas wanted the company to borrow against it for an expansion project in Cabo.”
Ethan remembered the project.
It failed.
Whitmore Heritage lost nearly twenty million dollars.
Lucas always blamed local permitting.
“Rebecca opposed the loan?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She said the land wasn’t Lucas’s to risk.”
“Whose was it?”
Claire looked at Mia.
“Mia’s.”
Ethan stared.
Charles had apparently amended his trust shortly before his death.
Northstar Point would remain family property until the birth of his first grandchild.
Then it would move into a separate trust for that grandchild.
Mia was born eight months before Charles died.
Ethan had never seen the amendment.
“How could Dad do that without telling me?”
Claire answered quietly.
“He may have told Rebecca.”
That hurt.
Charles had trusted Rebecca with something he withheld from his sons.
Naomi found another trail.
The Cayman account Rebecca allegedly used to flee was not opened by Rebecca.
The application bore her name.
But the identifying documents had been submitted through Victor Hale’s office.
The account was funded with $940,000 from a Whitmore Heritage subsidiary.
Then $900,000 was transferred out two months later to an entity called Bellweather Advisory.
“Who owns Bellweather?” Ethan asked.
Naomi said, “We don’t know yet.”
The missing forty thousand dollars paid account-maintenance fees and intermediaries.
A sophisticated setup.
Designed to make it look like Rebecca had stolen money and fled.
Ethan felt sick.
He had believed it.
Not completely.
But enough.
He remembered sitting with Lucas six years earlier.
Lucas telling him, “You have to consider the possibility she wanted out.”
Margaret telling him Rebecca resented the Whitmore family.
Victor presenting financial records suggesting Rebecca had secret accounts.
Ethan had defended his wife at first.
Then doubt entered.
That was all they needed.
A little doubt.
Mia approached the table.
“What are you talking about?”
Ethan closed the laptop.
“Money.”
“Mom’s money?”
“Some of it.”
“Did Grandma steal it?”
Claire said gently, “We don’t know everything yet.”
Mia looked at Ethan.
“Dad?”
He refused to lie.
“I think people did things they shouldn’t have.”
“Grandma?”
“Maybe.”
Mia’s eyes filled.
“She hit me because of Mom.”
Ethan pulled her close.
“I’m sorry.”
“She hates her.”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, she does.”
Seven-year-olds sometimes understood hatred more efficiently than accountants.
That evening Morales called.
Police had searched Margaret’s home pursuant to a warrant connected to Rebecca’s disappearance.
They found an old locked document case.
Inside were trust papers.
Photographs.
Rebecca’s missing passport.
Ethan went completely still.
“She had Rebecca’s passport?”
“Yes.”
The passport authorities had assumed Rebecca took it when she vanished.
She had not.
Margaret had kept it for six years.
Morales continued.
“We found something else.”
“What?”
“A burner phone.”
“Does it work?”
“Forensics is examining it.”
“Whose was it?”
“We don’t know.”
Then Morales sent Ethan a photograph.
The burner phone had a piece of tape across the back.
One handwritten word:
LUCAS
Before Ethan could respond, Claire’s phone buzzed.
She read the message.
Her face drained of color.
“What?”
She turned the screen toward him.
May you like
Unknown sender.
Cancel your wedding permanently, or Mia learns what Claire did the night Rebecca disappeared.
