Chapter 31 - THE UNANSWERED KNOCK
Vance and his guards retreated rapidly through the secret garden gate, vanishing into the dense fog rolling off Boston Harbor before officers breached the perimeter.
Federal agents swarmed the Vance Manor within minutes, securing the subterranean vault and confiscating three decades of explosive corporate evidence.
By midnight, the news of the massive discovery at 142 Chestnut Street dominated national news broadcasts from Boston to San Francisco.
The evidence recovered from behind the mahogany walls linked high-profile political figures and corporate executives across the United States to extortion and fraud.
Two weeks later, I returned to my Mission Bay condo in San Francisco, standing on the balcony as the cold Pacific breeze filled the living room.
The Bennett House Foundation was already receiving inquiries from city officials in Boston to build a secondary support facility on Chestnut Street.
I sat at my kitchen counter, looking at the framed porcelain fragment resting beneath the warm glow of the overhead light.
Suddenly, a loud, deliberate three-beat knock echoed through the quiet condo from the hallway outside my front door.
I walked to the door, looking through the security peephole into the brightly lit corridor.
Standing outside was a courier holding a small velvet-lined box stamped with the official seal of the United States Department of Justice.
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Tucked under the box was a folded handwritten note that bore no signature, written in fresh black ink:
The vault in Boston was only the second key; the third key rests inside the house where your father was born.
