Chapter 7: The Music Box
I drove back to Grandfather's house.
The fraud hold I had filed covered real property and financial accounts — it did not cover personal items already distributed under the will.
The cedar music box had been left to me.
But it was still sitting on the shelf in Grandfather's bedroom, and my father still had a key to the house.
I pulled into the driveway and saw that the front door was already open.
Not broken.
Unlocked.
Standing six inches ajar the way it did when someone had just gone through it in a hurry.
I pushed it open and walked in.
Chloe was in the living room.
She was holding the music box.
She turned when she heard me.
For a moment neither of us spoke.
She was wearing the same expression she'd had at the will reading — that particular smile she used when she thought she had already won.
"Dad said you filed some kind of legal hold," she said.
"He's dealing with it.
I'm just here to collect a few things."
"That box was left to me."
"Dad says there's a question about the validity of the will now.
Since you're apparently challenging it." She tilted the box slightly.
"Until that's resolved, he thought it was better to keep certain items somewhere safe."
"Put it down, Chloe."
"Or what?
You'll add it to your FBI file?" She set it on the side table — not gently.
The latch clicked.
"Genevieve, do you understand what you're doing to this family?
Dad made some decisions that maybe weren't perfectly documented.
That happens in estate planning.
You're turning it into a federal case over paperwork."
"Over two million dollars in forged transfers."
"Over *assets that were always going to come to us anyway.*" Her voice rose.
"You spent six months here playing the devoted granddaughter and you got a music box.
We got the estate.
That's what Grandfather wanted, whether the paperwork is tidy or not."
"He signed a trust document in 1998," I said.
"It left the estate equally divided between all grandchildren.
Raymond Vance replaced it with a version that didn't."
She blinked.
"That's not—"
"Arthur Pelham witnessed the original.
His signature is on it.
He has the document."
The smile didn't disappear all at once.
It faded in stages, like a light being slowly turned down.
"Who is Arthur Pelham?" she said.
"Grandfather's business partner for thirty-one years.
The man Dad has been afraid of since last night." I walked to the side table and picked up the music box.
"Chloe.
I'm not asking you to take my side.
I'm telling you what the evidence shows.
You signed witness documents on three of those transfers.
You were twenty-four.
That makes you a participant."
She took a step back.
"I didn't know what I was signing."
"Then say that.
To the investigators.
Say it clearly and say it early, because the window for cooperation is not going to stay open."
Her face had gone pale.
"Dad said this would never go anywhere."
"Dad said a lot of things." I looked at her — really looked, the way I hadn't let myself since the funeral.
She was twenty-seven years old and she was frightened and she had let our father use her because it had always been easier to be on his side than to ask questions.
"You're not a bad person, Chloe.
But you made bad choices.
How you handle the next few days will matter more than anything else."
She sat down on the edge of the couch.
For the first time, she didn't look like someone performing an emotion.
She just looked like my younger sister, which was somehow worse.
"What should I do?" she said.
It came out small.
"Call your own attorney.
Not Dad's.
Your own.
Today."
She nodded slowly.
I turned to leave.
"Genevieve." I stopped.
"The music box.
What's in it?"
I looked down at it in my hands.
I hadn't opened it yet.
I had been so focused on the safe, the drives, the documents, that I had forgotten Grandfather's letter said: *A cedar music box and its contents.*
I set it on the table and opened the latch.
Inside, beneath the velvet lining, was a small brass key.
And beneath the key, folded into a square no larger than a matchbook, was a piece of paper.
I unfolded it.
It was a claim ticket.
For a safe deposit box at a bank I didn't recognize — a branch in a town forty minutes north.
Dated three weeks before Grandfather died.
"What is it?" Chloe asked.
I folded the paper and put it in my pocket.
"I'll let you know."
I was almost at the door when my phone rang.
My father.
I answered.
"I know you've been to see Vance," he said.
His voice had lost the restaurant composure entirely.
"And I know about Pelham.
I don't know what he's told you, but I want you to understand something, Genevieve.
If this goes forward, it won't just be me who suffers.
Your mother has nothing to do with any of this."
"Her name is on four of the canceled checks, Dad."
Silence.
"She signed what I told her to sign," he said.
"She didn't understand what she was signing."
"Then she should have asked."
"She trusted me." His voice cracked — just slightly.
"She trusted me, and I — " He stopped.
I waited.
"I need more time," he said.
"Please."
It was the first time in my life I had heard him say that word to me.
"You have until tomorrow morning," I said.
"After that, it's out of my hands."
I hung up and stood in the hallway for a moment, the music box under one arm and the claim ticket in my pocket.
May you like
Tomorrow morning, I would drive forty minutes north.
Whatever was in that safe deposit box, Grandfather had saved it for last.
