Chapter 3 - THE MAN WHO HAD BEEN DEAD FOR EIGHTEEN MONTHS
3
Martin tried to stop me from going to Room 418.
I went anyway.
Not alone.
The hotel key card belonged to the Calder House, a narrow boutique hotel six blocks from Martin’s office.
Martin insisted we contact police.
I refused.
“What exactly would we tell them?” I asked. “My former fiancé wanted access to my company, his father once worked for mine, and a private investigator who supposedly disappeared left me a hotel key?”
“That would be a start.”
“And when they call Daniel?”
Martin’s expression tightened.
“If Samuel Cross is alive, I want to know why he vanished.”
“So do I.”
Martin finally agreed to come as far as the fourth-floor hallway.
“If anything feels wrong, you leave.”
I didn’t answer.
“Claire.”
“I heard you.”
Room 418 was at the end of the corridor.
The key worked.
I opened the door.
The room was empty.
The curtains were drawn.
No suitcase.
No clothes.
No Samuel Cross.
On the desk sat a laptop, an old portable hard drive, and a photograph of my father.
I stepped inside.
Martin remained near the door.
Then the bathroom opened.
I spun around.
A man in his late fifties emerged slowly with both hands raised.
He looked exhausted.
Gray beard.
Dark circles beneath his eyes.
A deep scar near his left temple.
“Claire Ellison?”
“Samuel Cross?”
He glanced at Martin.
“You weren’t supposed to bring him.”
Martin stiffened.
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
“Not the first rumor about me that turned out useful.”
I stayed near the doorway.
“Why did you contact me?”
Samuel looked at the laptop.
“Because the wedding was canceled.”
My stomach tightened.
“You knew about the wedding?”
“I knew what the Mercers needed it for.”
Martin stepped forward.
“What exactly did Edward hire you to investigate?”
Samuel gave him a strange look.
“You.”
Silence filled the room.
I turned toward Martin.
He looked stunned.
“That’s absurd.”
Samuel opened the laptop.
“Edward didn’t know who to trust.”
“Apparently not.”
“Stop.”
Both men looked at me.
“I’m not interested in watching two old men measure suspicion. Tell me what my father found.”
Samuel studied my face.
Then he nodded.
“Your father came to me seven months before he died. He believed someone was stealing proprietary information from Ellison Maritime.”
“Daniel?”
“He didn’t know.”
“Patricia?”
“No.”
Samuel rotated the laptop.
On the screen was a list of dates, account logs, photographs, and financial transfers.
“Someone inside your company had been accessing archived research connected to a program called Northstar.”
There was that word again.
“What is Northstar?”
Samuel stared at me for several seconds.
“Something your father wished he’d never created.”
Martin leaned forward.
“Edward’s letter mentions it.”
Samuel’s eyes sharpened.
“You opened the letter?”
“Today.”
“Then things are moving faster than I expected.”
I wanted to scream.
“What is Northstar?”
Samuel pulled up a scanned document.
ELLISON MARITIME ANALYTICS.
PROJECT NORTHSTAR.
1989-2001.
My father had started the company in 1998.
“How could this begin in 1989?”
“Because Northstar existed before Ellison Maritime.”
Samuel clicked another file.
“The original work belonged to your grandfather.”
I frowned.
“My grandfather repaired marine radios.”
“That’s what you were told.”
Samuel showed me an old photograph.
My grandfather, Thomas Ellison, stood beside a row of government communications equipment.
“He was a signals engineer.”
“For who?”
“Several contractors. Mostly maritime defense work.”
Martin muttered something under his breath.
Samuel continued.
“Northstar began as a predictive system for identifying anomalies in commercial shipping patterns.”
“Smuggling?”
“Among other things.”
“And Dad inherited it?”
“Parts of the research. He modernized it.”
“What does this have to do with Daniel?”
Samuel opened another folder.
Inside were photographs of Vincent Mercer.
“Vincent discovered what Northstar could do.”
“Which was?”
“Predict where ships would be before their own operators knew exactly where they’d be.”
I stared at him.
“That sounds impossible.”
“Today? Not especially. Thirty years ago? It was extremely valuable.”
Samuel explained that early versions of Northstar combined shipping schedules, weather data, customs patterns, cargo histories, port congestion, and dozens of other variables.
My father and Vincent had seen commercial potential.
Insurance.
Routing.
Risk detection.
But Vincent had apparently seen something else.
“If you can predict vulnerable routes,” Samuel said, “you can also predict vulnerable ships.”
The meaning settled slowly.
“Piracy?”
“Cargo theft. Smuggling. Market manipulation. Insurance fraud.”
Martin looked sick.
“Vincent used the system criminally?”
“Edward believed he did.”
“Believed?”
“There was never enough evidence to prove the worst of it.”
Samuel opened several financial statements.
“The eight million dollars Vincent was accused of stealing was real. But Edward suspected that was merely money Vincent forgot to hide well.”
I thought about Daniel’s words.
Your father destroyed mine.
“Did my father frame him?”
“No.”
Samuel’s answer came immediately.
“But Edward did something that Vincent considered worse.”
“What?”
“He testified.”
The story unfolded slowly.
My father had discovered unauthorized transactions.
He had confronted Vincent.
Vincent denied everything.
Then a warehouse employee disappeared.
A ship insured through one of Vincent’s shell companies sank under suspicious circumstances.
Three crew members died.
My father went to federal investigators.
Vincent was eventually convicted on financial charges because prosecutors could not prove the deaths were connected.
“He died in prison,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And Patricia blamed my father.”
“For everything.”
“Did Dad know Daniel was Vincent’s son?”
“Eventually.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
Samuel’s expression changed.
“Because by the time he confirmed it, he believed you were already emotionally attached.”
“That didn’t stop him from warning Martin.”
“No.”
“Then why not warn me?”
Samuel looked toward my father’s photograph.
“Because Edward made a mistake.”
I waited.
“He confronted Patricia first.”
My blood ran cold.
“When?”
“Five months before he died.”
Samuel pulled up a photograph.
The same one I had seen earlier.
Patricia inside my father’s office.
“That meeting?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know exactly. Edward refused to record it.”
“But after that?”
“He became afraid.”
I almost laughed.
“My father wasn’t afraid of anyone.”
“That’s what frightened me.”
Samuel opened an audio file.
My father’s voice filled the hotel room.
I had not heard it in eighteen months.
For one terrible second, I was no longer thirty-four years old.
I was a daughter hearing her dead father again.
“Samuel,” my father said on the recording, “if anything happens to me, do not assume Patricia came for the company.”
Static.
“She wants Harbor Street because she believes Vincent left something there.”
Another pause.
“I’m beginning to think he did.”
The recording ended.
I wiped my eyes angrily.
“What did Vincent leave?”
“I don’t know.”
“Northstar?”
“Possibly.”
Martin pointed at the hard drive.
“You disappeared after Edward died. Why?”
Samuel was silent.
Then he turned the laptop toward us.
A hospital surveillance still appeared.
The date was the night before my father died.
A woman wearing medical scrubs entered his private hospital room at 2:13 a.m.
Her face was partially covered by a mask.
But her eyes were visible.
My stomach turned.
“Patricia?”
“I thought so.”
“You thought?”
“I couldn’t prove it.”
“Where did the footage come from?”
“Edward paid for extra security. I had access.”
“Why wasn’t this given to police?”
“It was.”
“What happened?”
“They said the woman was a member of the cleaning staff.”
“Was she?”
“No.”
Samuel clicked another image.
The same woman leaving through a service door.
This time the camera captured her hand.
On one finger was a distinctive black-stone ring.
I had seen that ring countless times.
Patricia wore it to dinners.
Thanksgiving.
My engagement party.
She had even worn it that morning.
I felt nauseated.
“What did she do in Dad’s room?”
“I don’t know.”
“He died the next day.”
“Yes.”
“Cause?”
“Cardiac arrest following complications from his existing heart condition.”
“Could somebody have caused it?”
Samuel did not answer immediately.
“That question is why I disappeared.”
I stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
“Two days after Edward died, someone broke into my apartment.”
“What was taken?”
“Only my Ellison files.”
“Who?”
“I never saw them.”
“You disappeared because you were scared?”
“Yes.”
At least he didn’t pretend otherwise.
Then he opened another folder.
“Before leaving, I copied everything.”
Hundreds of files appeared.
Photographs.
Bank transfers.
Security footage.
Daniel.
Patricia.
My father.
And a woman I didn’t recognize.
“Who is she?”
Samuel zoomed in.
“Rebecca Shaw.”
“She looks familiar.”
“She should.”
A newspaper article appeared.
TECH HEIRESS DIES IN TRAGIC COASTAL ACCIDENT.
The article was dated six years earlier.
Rebecca Shaw, thirty-one, had fallen from a cliff while hiking near Monterey.
My eyes moved across the article.
“She was wealthy.”
“Very.”
“What does she have to do with Daniel?”
Samuel opened another photograph.
Daniel stood beside Rebecca Shaw at a charity gala.
He looked younger.
His hair was longer.
But it was unmistakably him.
His arm was around her waist.
Rebecca was smiling.
I could barely speak.
“They knew each other?”
Samuel stared at me.
“Claire, Daniel didn’t simply know Rebecca.”
He clicked another file.
A photograph of an engagement ring.
Then a wedding venue contract.
Then a life-insurance document.
Samuel finally said it.
“Daniel Mercer was engaged to Rebecca Shaw when she died.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“No.”
“He used a different last name.”
“What name?”
“Vale.”
I stared at the photographs.
“Did he kill her?”
“I could never prove it.”
Martin whispered, “Jesus.”
Samuel reached into a drawer and removed a red folder.
“This arrived at my post-office box yesterday.”
“From who?”
“Rebecca’s sister.”
He slid it toward me.
On the cover were two handwritten words.
HONEYMOON PLAN.
I opened it.
Inside was a reservation for a private sailing excursion.
Scheduled five days after my wedding.
Friday.
The same Friday Patricia had mentioned.
Daniel had told me our honeymoon would be in Italy.
The reservation was instead for a private boat leaving from a marina forty miles south of the city.
Two passengers.
Daniel Mercer.
Claire Ellison.
Samuel spoke softly.
“Rebecca Shaw died five days after she was supposed to marry Daniel Vale.”
I looked up.
“She never married him?”
“She postponed the wedding the morning of the ceremony.”
My skin prickled.
“What happened five days later?”
“She agreed to meet him one last time.”
May you like
I already knew the answer before Samuel said it.
“They went sailing.”
