Chapter 22 - The Second Name The paper contained a name.
THOMAS REED.
Noah didn't recognize it.
I did.
Thomas Reed had been my father's private investigator twenty years earlier.
He disappeared shortly after Dad's death.
According to company records, he had retired.
But Claire had written his name in the cane.
Why?
Ruiz searched the old case files.
Thomas Reed had investigated Carter Meridian's original acquisition of a company called Northstar Medical.
That acquisition had created the financial structure Vanessa and Elliot later exploited.
But there was something else.
The original investigation had never been closed.
A handwritten note was attached.
Subject believes Carter family money originated from offshore accounts created before 1998.
I read it twice.
Claire's birth year.
Noah noticed my expression.
"What?"
"Nothing."
But it wasn't nothing.
My father had always refused to discuss the year Claire was born.
He had told me she was born in a small town hospital.
Claire had never questioned it.
Now I wondered why.
Ruiz found Thomas Reed living under another name.
But before we could reach him, someone sent me an envelope.
Inside was an old photograph.
My father.
Claire.
Vanessa.
And a fourth person.
A woman I had never seen.
May you like
On the back were three words:
ASK ABOUT 1998.
Related Stories
