Chapter 15 - Recovering the Family Legacy
I didn't wait an hour. I drove straight back to the house, walked into the living room, and unscrewed the heavy brass base of the antique table lamp sitting by the sofa. Right where she said it would be, taped securely to the weighted iron bottom with black duct tape, was a small, silver safety deposit key stamped with the number 402.
I took Inspector Vance with me to the National Trust bank downtown. Armed with my power-of-attorney documents and a supplemental police seizure order, the vault manager led us down into the underground steel vault, inserting his master key alongside mine to slide the long metal box out of its slot.
We carried the box to a private viewing room and lifted the lid.
Inside, resting on a bed of faded blue velvet, were my family’s treasures. There was my grandmother’s two-carat diamond ring, my father’s engraved 1960 Rolex watch, my mother’s original pearl wedding necklace, and over fifteen thousand dollars in rare gold coins that my grandfather had collected over his lifetime.
Beside the jewelry lay a notebook. I opened it. It was a handwritten ledger kept by Elena over the last four years, listing the pawn value and black-market auction estimates for every single item in the box. She had been systematically cataloging my family’s history, preparing to auction it off to the highest bidder the moment my mother was buried and I was out of the country.
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Inspector Vance placed a hand on my shoulder as I carefully picked up my father’s watch, holding the cool metal in my palm. “We’ll need to catalog these for evidence, Marcus, but I’ll have the district attorney release them back into your custody before the week is out. She really tried to strip you of everything, didn't she?”
“She tried,” I said, closing the box and locking the brass latch. “But she failed. Let’s take this to the courthouse. I want the jury to see exactly what her greed looked like.”
