Chapter 3 - Charles Whitmore Is Still Alive
Daniel had watched his father’s coffin lowered into the ground.
He had delivered the eulogy.
He had spent seven years believing Charles died after a private plane crash.
Now Ethan’s tablet suggested otherwise.
Daniel turned toward Margaret.
“Is Dad alive?”
Margaret began crying.
Emily stared at her.
“That’s what this was about?”
Margaret sank into a chair.
“Yes.”
The word changed the room.
She explained that Charles had not been on the plane.
The crash killed two pilots and one business associate, but Charles used the disaster to disappear.
Daniel remembered the closed-casket funeral.
The identification had been handled through Charles’s private attorney.
Daniel had never questioned it.
“Why fake his death?”
Margaret looked at the bank statements.
“Because federal investigators were getting close.”
Charles had operated a network of private companies that moved money out of employee pension funds.
When an internal accountant discovered it, Charles staged his death and vanished.
Margaret claimed she learned the truth only after the funeral.
Daniel did not believe her automatically.
“Then why protect him for seven years?”
“He threatened you.”
“With what?”
Margaret hesitated.
“Your signature.”
Charles possessed documents that could make it appear Daniel approved several transfers.
Margaret believed exposing Charles would send Daniel to prison.
“So you chose for me.”
“I chose to protect my son.”
Daniel shook his head.
“You chose silence.”
Emily looked at the yellow envelope.
“Who sent this?”
Margaret admitted Charles did.
He wanted her to destroy records before an upcoming Whitmore Foundation audit.
But Emily found the envelope first.
That was why Margaret panicked.
Ethan quietly raised his hand.
Everyone looked at him.
“There was a man outside too.”
Daniel crouched.
“What man?”
“When Grandma was on the phone. I saw somebody by the back window.”
Ethan opened another clip.
A man in a dark coat stood outside the kitchen.
His face appeared for less than two seconds.
Margaret covered her mouth.
Daniel recognized him.
“Uncle Robert?”
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Robert Whitmore was Charles’s younger brother.
And according to the family, Robert had disappeared twenty years ago.
