Chapter 3 - The Dead Husband’s Shadow
The word echoed in the high-ceilinged room, heavy and absurd.
David’s.
Adrian stared at her as if she were speaking an unknown language. “Your husband? David Rivera?”
“Yes!” Elena cried, her body shaking as she held the terrified child. “David brought it home four years ago! He worked as an independent contractor! He worked all over New England—Boston, Providence, Newport!”
“David Rivera was a carpenter,” Mrs. Whitcomb chimed in quietly from the doorway, her voice trembling. “I checked her references before hiring her, Mr. Mercer. David did restoration work on old properties.”
“Did he restore this house?” Adrian asked, his voice razor-sharp, turning to Mrs. Whitcomb.
“No, sir,” Mrs. Whitcomb replied quickly. “Never. We use Mercer Construction for all estate maintenance. David Rivera never stepped foot on Windmere property.”
Adrian turned back to Elena, the silver music box still whirring softly in his palm, its delicate notes sounding like a mockery of his grief. “If your husband never worked here, how did he come into possession of an engraved, custom-made sterling silver heirloom belonging to Caroline Mercer?”
“He... he told me he bought it at an estate sale in Boston,” Elena stammered, wiping tears from her cheeks with the back of her wrist. “He knew I liked antique things. He brought it home one night wrapped in paper. He said it was a gift for me because we were expecting Maisie.”
“An estate sale,” Adrian repeated, his tone laced with venomous sarcasm. “A custom box with my wife’s initials, containing a melody she composed in this very room, sold at a flea market in Boston?”
“I didn't know!” Elena sobbed. “I didn't know whose initials those were! David died two months after Maisie was born! A scaffold collapsed on a site in South Boston. I couldn't keep our apartment. I had to sell almost everything we owned just to pay for his funeral and buy formula for the baby! The only things I kept were his tools and that little box because Maisie loved the music! It was the only thing that made her stop crying at night!”
Maisie, hearing her mother’s frantic tone, began to cry softly, her small hands clutching Elena’s apron.
Adrian stood frozen in the center of the room. Every instinct honed over fifteen years of corporate warfare told him she was lying. People stole. Staff took advantage of grieving families. Items went missing from grand mansions all the time, passed down through black markets or sold off for quick cash.
Yet, as he looked at Elena’s raw, terrified face, he saw something that didn't fit the mold of a callous thief. There was genuine confusion in her eyes—a deep, bewildered terror that matched her words.
“Miles,” Adrian said, his voice dropping into a cold, transactional tone.
“Yes, Mr. Mercer?”
“Call Detective Miller at the Newport Precinct. Tell him I need a forensic audit on a theft case.”
Elena gasped, dropping to her knees on the hardwood floor, clutching Maisie to her chest. “Mr. Mercer, please! Don't call the police! If I get arrested, who will take care of my baby? She has no one else! Please, I’ll leave! I’ll pack our things right now and leave! You can keep the box!”
“You aren't leaving this property until I know the truth,” Adrian said, turning his back on her. “Mrs. Whitcomb, lock them in the cottage. Put two security guards at the driveway gate. No one enters, no one leaves.”
“Sir,” Mrs. Whitcomb hesitated. “The child—”
“The child played a song that only my dead wife knew,” Adrian snapped, his eyes fixed on the rain-slicked window overlooking the ocean. “And until I know how a dead carpenter from Boston handed her that song, no one moves.”
He walked out of the east parlor, holding the silver music box tightly in his fist, the cold metal biting into his palm.
Downstairs in his private study, Adrian poured three fingers of scotch and sank into his leather armchair. The room was dark, lit only by the green glow of his desk lamp and the flicker of dying embers in the fireplace.
He set the silver box on the polished mahogany desk.
He clicked the latch again.
Rising like a question, falling like an ache.
Why would Caroline give this away? Or had it been stolen?
If it was stolen, why didn't Caroline report it? She had noticed every missing necklace, every mislaid ring. Yet when she returned from Maine four years ago, she had simply laughed off the lost music box, saying she must have left it on the seat of a coastal train.
“It’s just a shiny trinket, Adrian,” she had said that night, kissing his cheek. “The real music is right here in my head.”
Was she lying?
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Adrian took a slow sip of the scotch, the burn down his throat doing nothing to ease the icy knot forming in his stomach. He opened his laptop and typed a quick message to his chief investigator, a former FBI agent named Marcus Vance.
Find out everything about David Rivera. Construction sites, bank records, phone logs from four years ago. I want to know every room he walked into, and every person he spoke to.
