Chapter 31 - The Ghost of Chicago
The mountain air turned to ice the moment the words settled in Ivy’s ears.
*Arthur Vance didn’t die of heart failure three years ago. He is alive.*
Ivy lowered the phone slowly, her hand shaking so violently that the heavy iron key slipped from her fingers, clattering hard against the flagstone floor of the old wine cellar. Clara froze, her hand still hovering inches above the cassette tape labeled with Grandmother Eleanor’s jagged handwriting.
"Ivy?" Clara’s voice was cautious, sharp with sudden alarm. "What did they say? Who was that?"
"My father," Ivy whispered. Her vocal cords felt constricted, like wire drawn tight across bone. She looked at Clara, seeing her own sudden terror reflected in the older woman’s wide, amber eyes. "He didn’t die in that hospital. The casket... the closed-casket funeral they made me pay for with my own college savings... there was no body inside it."
Clara’s breath hitched. "Arthur? But... Eleanor spent months grieving him before her own health gave out. She thought her son had succumbed to his debts and his ruined heart."
"He ran," Ivy said, the pieces assembling themselves in her mind with brutal, terrifying clarity. "He staged his demise to escape the Chicago creditors. He left Mother to drown in pride, left Victoria to posture as the golden heir, and left me... he left me behind to work eighteen hours a day to clear his balance sheets."
"And where is he now?" Clara demanded, leaning forward, her gaze dropping to the floor where the iron key lay beside the ancient surveyor’s map.
"Heading here," Ivy said grimly. "Toward Meadowgate."
Outside, the first rumbles of an unseasonal October storm rolled across the Blue Ridge mountains. The sky through the high cellar grate had turned the color of bruised slate. Ivy picked up the cassette tape and slid it into an old battery-operated player resting on a workbench in the corner. Her grandmother’s voice crackled through the small speaker, dry, measured, yet trembling with suppressed sorrow.
*"Ivy, my dearest girl... if you are listening to this, the house of cards has finally tipped into the abyss. You have always been my true heir, not because you share my blood, but because you bear the cross of this family’s sins without passing the blame to others. But you must know the truth about Arthur. He was not a fool who merely blundered into debt. He was a thief who traded the Vance ancestral charters to men in Geneva—men who do not trade in paper, but in blood and land. If Arthur ever returns, do not look at his face. Look at his hands. If he wears the iron band on his right ring finger, he is no longer your father. He is their collector."*
The tape ended with a soft, mechanical click.
Before Ivy could speak, the perimeter alarms of Meadowgate began to wail—a shrill, rhythmic shriek echoing through the limestone foundations. On the security monitor mounted near the cellar archway, headlights cut through the torrential rain at the base of the long driveway.
May you like
A lone black sedan had smashed through the wooden boundary gate, hurtling directly toward the main courtyard.
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