Chapter 4 - THE GIRL I SHOULD HAVE HATEDI had every reason to dislike Alyssa Mercer.
Twelve hours earlier, she had grabbed me in front of hundreds of people, thrown my belongings onto the pavement, broken my phone, and demanded that I remove my dress because she believed money made her unique.
Now she was trapped inside her father’s mansion.
And I was racing across town to help her.
Lena drove.
Two unmarked state vehicles followed us.
“You’re certain this isn’t a setup?” she asked.
“No.”
“That was not comforting.”
“It wasn’t intended to be.”
I tried Alyssa again.
No answer.
Her last location, shared automatically when she texted me the photographs, placed her at Mercer House, a stone mansion overlooking Lake Harlow.
Grant Mercer had purchased the property for twelve million dollars.
A stone wall surrounded it.
Iron gates guarded the entrance.
The first thing we noticed when we arrived was that the gates were open.
Lena didn’t like that.
“Stay in the car.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Elizabeth.”
“She called me.”
“You are a university president.”
“And?”
“University presidents usually don’t enter potentially dangerous houses with state investigators.”
“Then today is educational.”
She gave me a look.
I got out.
The front door stood partially open.
Inside, the foyer was silent.
A broken vase lay on the marble floor.
“Alyssa!” I shouted.
Nothing.
Then we heard crying.
Upstairs.
Officers moved first.
I followed despite Lena’s objections.
We found Alyssa inside a bedroom closet.
She was holding a fireplace poker.
Her mascara had streaked down her face.
When an officer opened the door, she nearly swung at him.
Then she saw me.
Something in her collapsed.
She dropped the poker.
“They took it.”
“What?”
“The letter.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
She sat on the floor, shaking.
“My dad’s security guy. I think. He came in, started opening drawers. When I confronted him, he told me Dad sent him.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
“Where’s your mother?”
Alyssa looked toward the hallway.
“I don’t know.”
We found Caroline Mercer twenty minutes later.
She wasn’t in the house.
Security cameras showed her leaving in her own car seven minutes before Alyssa called me.
No luggage.
No phone.
No explanation.
Alyssa sat at the kitchen island wrapped in a blanket while investigators processed the house.
She looked younger without the attitude.
Not kinder.
Just younger.
“What was in the safe?” I asked.
“Documents. Jewelry. Cash.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. Maybe fifty thousand.”
“And my father’s letter.”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
Alyssa stared at the table.
“A photograph of you.”
That surprised me.
“Me?”
“You were maybe sixteen.”
My stomach tightened.
“Where?”
“Standing beside your dad.”
I remembered that age.
I remembered my father taking me to university functions.
I remembered meeting countless businessmen whose names I forgot.
Maybe Grant had been one of them.
“Why would your father keep that?”
“I don’t know.”
I studied her.
“Why did you text me?”
She laughed bitterly.
“Because apparently you’re the only person my father is afraid of.”
That answer stayed with me.
I sat opposite her.
“You need to tell me everything you know about your family’s connection to St. Jude.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Her eyes flashed.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“You think because I acted like a spoiled idiot this morning, I must be part of whatever this is.”
“You called the campus your university.”
“I was angry.”
“You said your family built it.”
“My father has told me that my entire life.”
“And you believed him.”
“Yes!”
“At twenty-one?”
Her face flushed.
“I know how that sounds.”
“Do you?”
She stood.
“You know what? Forget it. I called you because I was scared.”
“And I came.”
That stopped her.
I continued.
“I could have ignored you.”
She sat down again.
“I know.”
“So help me understand.”
Her voice softened.
“My father controls everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“Our house. My accounts. My classes. My friends.”
“Your friends?”
“If he doesn’t like somebody, suddenly they stop getting invited places.”
“That doesn’t explain this morning.”
“No.”
She looked embarrassed.
“That was me.”
At least she admitted it.
“I’ve spent my whole life watching people move when my family enters a room,” she said. “Restaurants find tables. Professors change deadlines. Police officers make tickets disappear.”
She looked at me.
“When nobody tells you no, you start thinking no is something that happens to other people.”
It was the first intelligent thing I had heard her say.
“So why are you changing now?”
“I’m not saying I’ve changed.”
“Good.”
She looked surprised.
“People don’t become better in twelve hours.”
A faint smile appeared.
“I guess not.”
My phone rang.
Lena.
She was downstairs.
“We found something.”
I left Alyssa with an officer and went to Grant Mercer’s study.
Behind a movable bookcase was a second safe.
Empty.
Almost.
At the bottom was a business card.
Daniel Bennett — Forensic Accounting & Compliance.
My father’s handwriting was on the back.
G.M. knows Blue Harbor is fictitious. Follow Lot 17.
Lot 17.
I stared at the words.
“What is that?” Lena asked.
“I don’t know.”
Alyssa appeared in the doorway.
“I do.”
We turned.
She pointed to the card.
“Lot 17 is land.”
“Where?”
“Near campus.”
“What’s there?”
“Mercer Hall.”
My pulse jumped.
Mercer Hall had been completed nine years earlier.
The official history said Grant donated the building.
“That land belonged to my grandmother,” Alyssa said.
“Which grandmother?”
“My mom’s mother.”
Caroline’s family.
“When did Mercer Development get it?”
She frowned.
“I thought they didn’t.”
Lena and I exchanged a look.
We pulled the county records.
Lot 17 had been valued at $2.8 million.
Six months later, it was transferred to Blue Harbor Educational Trust.
Four weeks after that, Blue Harbor “donated” it to St. Jude.
The university valued the donation at twelve million dollars.
Then St. Jude hired Mercer Development to construct Mercer Hall for eighteen million.
Grant received public credit for a thirty-million-dollar philanthropic project.
But he had apparently spent almost none of that.
Worse, Mercer Development had earned millions from the construction contract.
“Your thirty-million-dollar donation,” I whispered.
Lena understood.
“It might never have existed.”
Alyssa looked sick.
“My father’s entire reputation…”
“May be built on a fraud.”
She slowly sat down.
Then her phone rang.
DAD.
She stared at the screen.
“Answer it,” Lena said.
Alyssa did.
“Dad?”
Grant’s voice was loud enough that I heard it.
“Where are you?”
“At home.”
“Who’s there?”
Alyssa looked at me.
“Nobody.”
Silence.
Grant knew she was lying.
“I need you to listen carefully.”
“Okay.”
“Pack a bag. A car will pick you up.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Alyssa.”
“No.”
Another pause.
Then his voice changed.
Colder.
“Have you spoken to Elizabeth Bennett?”
Alyssa swallowed.
“No.”
“Good.”
He continued.
“That woman is dangerous.”
I almost laughed.
Alyssa looked at me.
Then asked the question that mattered.
“Dad, who was Daniel Bennett?”
Silence.
Grant didn’t answer.
“Dad?”
When he finally spoke, his voice was nearly a whisper.
“A man who should have minded his own business.”
The line went dead.
Alyssa lowered the phone.
Lena looked at me.
“Well,” she said.
“That sounded like a confession.”
“No.”
I stared at my father’s business card.
“But it sounded like a beginning.”
That night, investigators searched public records for everything connected to Lot 17.
At 10:36 p.m., they found something nobody expected.
The original deed had not belonged to Caroline Mercer’s mother.
It had belonged jointly to Caroline and someone else.
A second owner.
Daniel Bennett.
My father.
I read the document three times.
There was no mistake.
My father had owned half the land beneath Mercer Hall.
Which meant the university building named after Grant Mercer was sitting on property partly stolen from my family.
And then I saw the date of the transfer.
Two days after my father supposedly signed away his rights.
There was a notarized signature.
Daniel Bennett.
Except my father couldn’t possibly have signed it.
Because on that date, he had been in a hospital intensive care unit after his first heart attack.
Somebody had forged his name.
And the notary who certified it?
May you like
Peter Nolan.
The current chief of campus police.
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