June was waiting in the principal’s office with Mrs. Lang, a school resource officer, and Detective Rhett Dalton.
She rushed into my arms when I entered.
Detective Dalton explained that Harold Voss had di:ed 18 months earlier. After his de:ath, investigators began reviewing cases he had handled because financial records suggested he had accepted payments from several local organizations, including the Briarwood Children’s Home.
“The contents of this box may be connected to that investigation,” he said. “We have not authenticated everything yet, so what I’m about to tell you is preliminary.”
He showed me copies of property records, bank transfers, and a letter written in Wesley’s handwriting.
Elise,
If this is ever found, believe one thing first: I would never leave you or June willingly.
My grandmother donated the Briarwood property under a remainder trust naming my first child as beneficiary. If the home ever closed or sold the land, the proceeds were to pass to that child.
That child is June.
The board has been selling sections of the property and hiding the money through false renovation expenses and shell charities. I discovered it while inspecting storm damage in the theater for an insurance claim.
I reported it to Voss before realizing he was involved.
I hid copies beneath the old costume loft.
If anything happens to me, find Agnes Bell in Willow Harbor. She lives in the blue house beside Saint Mark’s Church.
Tell June I loved her every day I was gone.
Wesley
My hands began trembling.
“What does this have to do with his accident?”
Detective Dalton placed the old crash report beside the letter.
“We now have reason to question the identification. The body was never tested against your husband’s medical or dental records. Voss approved it based only on the possessions found in the car.”
“Then whose body did I bury?”
“We don’t know yet. The records suggest Wesley may have been attacked and his vehicle taken. We are still verifying that.”
He then showed us a photograph.
It had been taken 3 years earlier.
Wesley stood outside a small blue house, older and thinner but unmistakably alive.
June made a broken sound beside me.
I could not breathe.
“Where did this come from?”
“Agnes Bell sent it after we contacted her today. Wesley mailed it to her 3 years ago with instructions to keep it as proof that he had survived, in case something happened to him again.”
June stared at the photograph.
“Why didn’t he come home?”
“We don’t have the full answer,” Detective Dalton said. “But Agnes still has a way to contact him.”
With our permission, he asked her to send a coded message:
The theater box has been found.
The next morning, Detective Dalton drove June and me to Willow Harbor.
Local officers had already secured Agnes’s blue house. Before allowing us inside, they confirmed that a man claiming to be Wesley had arrived before sunrise. Detective Dalton took his fingerprints, compared them with old employment records, and recorded an initial statement.
Then the door opened.
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