Chapter 9 - Andrew Had Helped Caroline Escape
Grant reopened archived records connected to Andrew Reed.
Employment files confirmed he worked contract security at the Hale
engagement party in 1999.
Emma’s parents had lied about when they met.
Rebecca finally admitted she knew why.
Andrew did not abduct Caroline.
He helped her escape.
After Caroline confronted Victor, she believed Victor’s staff were
searching for the documents she copied.
Andrew found her in a service hallway.
He drove her to his sister’s apartment.
Caroline stayed there almost two days.
“Why not police?” Emma asked.
Rebecca looked ashamed.
“Because Caroline had taken original financial records from Victor’s
study.”
“She thought she’d be arrested?”
“Yes.”
“And the wound?”
Rebecca did not know.
Grant found Andrew’s late sister, Melissa Reed, now sixty-eight.
Melissa remembered Caroline arriving in the emerald gown with blood on
her side.
The injury came from the dress.
Caroline told her:
“Margaret put something in the seam.”
Emma’s heart pounded.
Margaret had hidden the object.
But why?
Melissa continued.
Caroline cut open part of the lining.
Inside she found a small brass key attached to the decorative head of a
long hatpin.
The sharp shaft had pierced through the fabric during the struggle to
open the seam.
Caroline removed the key.
The shaft remained buried inside.
“What did the key open?” Grant asked.
Melissa answered:
“A deposit box.”
Caroline and Andrew went to a private bank two days later.
Inside were copies of Victor Hale’s financial records.
Margaret had hidden them there.
The hatpin was not intended as a weapon.
It was a crude hiding mechanism for the key.
But Margaret never expected Caroline to wear the dress.
She believed the gown would remain in her private wardrobe.
Caroline borrowed it without permission for the engagement party after
her own dress tore.
One accident collided with one secret.
Then Emma asked the question nobody had answered.
“If Mom got the records, what happened to them?”
Melissa looked toward Daniel.
“Andrew kept them.”
Daniel went still.
Because after Andrew’s death, his personal papers had been transferred
May you like
to one person.
Daniel.
