Chapter 2 - THE HOUSE WITHOUT A FIREPLACE
The drive was no larger than my thumb. Nancy said she had copied files onto it from the old computer in my father’s machine shop before the building was cleared for sale.
“What files?”
She looked toward the hospital curtain, though no one stood behind it.
“Invoices. Bank statements. Things Ryan told me not to worry about.”
My father, Paul Mercer, had owned Mercer Precision Works in Dundalk. After he died six years earlier, Ryan offered to help Nancy close the company. He worked in business development for Chesapeake Tactical Systems, a defense subcontractor that purchased specialty parts from small manufacturers.
I had been stationed overseas when the paperwork was handled. Ryan told me the shop’s remaining contracts had been completed, its debts paid, and its equipment sold.
By sunrise, an officer accompanied me to Nancy’s house so I could collect her medications.
The kitchen looked smaller than I remembered. Broken glass covered the marble tile. A chair lay on its side. The pie Ryan had brought remained sealed on the counter, the bakery string still tied.
There was no fireplace poker. No weapon of any kind except the bat the police had recovered beside the back door.
The security router had been unplugged, but the doorbell camera stored motion clips through a cloud service. I submitted a preservation request from the officer’s tablet.
The first available clip showed Ryan arriving with the pie.
A later clip showed him leaving through the kitchen door empty-handed. Forty-three seconds after that, he returned carrying a bat taken from the trunk of his car.
My mother had not surprised him with a weapon. He had gone outside, chosen one, and come back.
In her upstairs office, desk drawers hung open. Tax folders covered the floor. Ryan had searched the room before calling the police.
I found a torn deposit slip beneath the desk. It listed Mercer Precision as the account holder and Chesapeake Tactical Systems as the source of a payment.
The amount was $486,700.
At the hospital, Nancy had insisted the shop had been dormant for almost six years.
I searched Maryland’s business database from my phone.
Mercer Precision had never been dissolved.
May you like
According to state records, my mother was still its sole owner.
And according to the invoices scattered across her office floor, the dead company had received more than six million dollars.
