Chapter 11 - Someone Had Targeted Frank Before
We found the next clue in a safe-deposit box Frank maintained at a bank
near downtown Kansas City.
I had forgotten the box existed.
Inside were copies of letters between Frank and his older brother,
Harold, discussing repeated offers for the family acreage.
One buyer used different company names but the same attorney.
That attorney later represented Grant Mercer.
Frank suspected someone was deliberately hiding the buyer’s identity.
He refused every offer.
Three months before Frank died, he wrote that Wesley had begun asking
strange questions about mineral rights, easements, and whether the land
would transfer automatically after death.
My stomach tightened when I read that.
Wesley swore Mercer had prompted those questions.
He said he had never wished his father dead and never expected to
inherit the property immediately.
I believed the first part.
I was no longer willing to assume the second.
Frank died after a heart attack while shoveling snow.
There had been no mystery around it.
No suspicious accident.
No whispered conspiracy.
Still, the timing of Mercer’s access to our financial records after the
funeral now mattered.
Denise cautioned me not to turn coincidence into accusation.
I appreciated that.
Facts had saved me at Willow Creek.
I would not abandon them now because suspicion was emotionally
satisfying.
The safe-deposit box also contained a flash drive.
On it was a recording Frank made after a meeting with Mercer.
Mercer could be heard saying the acreage would become “a generational
asset once the corridor is approved.”
Frank answered, “Then my wife will decide what happens to it.”
Mercer laughed.
“Eventually, Wesley will decide.”
Frank’s reply was calm.
“Not if I can help it.”
The recording ended.
A second file contained a photograph of Mercer standing outside a
restaurant with another man.
Denise enlarged it.
I recognized the second man immediately.
He was sitting at Willow Creek the night I discovered my family’s secret
dinner.
He had been two tables behind them, alone, pretending to read his phone.
At the time, I thought he was a stranger.
He was not.
I kept the original restaurant envelope in my desk. Its paper had
May you like
softened at the corners, but it reminded me that a quiet decision could
change the direction of an entire family.
