My stepmother dumped my dead mother's ashes onto our driveway, kicked me out of my father's house, and watched as my stepbrother filmed me crawling through the rain. “Smile, orphan,” he laughed, while I desperately gathered what was left of my mother with my bare hands. They thought they'd stolen everything from me, but hidden in my suitcase was a tiny brass key connected to a secret my father had never told them.

At seven that evening, Detective Vance Miller—no relation to my family, but Dad’s primary contact in the major crimes unit—arrived at Blackwood Manor through the service entrance.

We sat in the kitchen around the farmhouse table. Between us lay the blue folder, the cassette tape, and the backup drive.

Miller listened to the tape twice without speaking. His jaw was set so tightly that the muscles in his cheek twitched.

“Your dad brought me preliminary reports six weeks ago,” Miller said, rubbing his eyes. “He didn't give me the names because he knew I’d have to take it to the feds, and he wanted to make sure he had every link nailed down first. He was terrified Grant would flee before we could freeze the offshore accounts.”

“Who pulled the trigger, Detective?” I asked directly. “Grant doesn't have the stomach for it.”

“You're right,” Miller sighed. “Grant is a bookkeeper with a coke habit and expensive tastes. He couldn't shoot a target at five yards. The shooter was a freelance contractor named Ray Kane. Kane did six years in federal prison for armed robbery. He drives a dark gray Dodge Charger—the same car spotted on traffic cameras three blocks from your dad’s office four minutes after the 911 call.”

“Where did Kane get the money?” Marianne asked.

Miller tapped the blue folder. “Look at the wire transfer to Apex Logistics. Forty-eight hours before David was hit, forty thousand dollars was withdrawn in cash from an Apex subsidiary ATM in Queens. Kane’s bank account showed a thirty-five-thousand-dollar cash deposit the next morning.”

“Can you arrest him?” I demanded.

“We don't have the murder weapon,” Miller said frustratingly. “And Kane’s alibi is that he was having breakfast at a diner six miles away. The cameras at the diner were conveniently malfunctioning. Without a direct witness or the firearm, the district attorney won't touch it. Rossi has judges in his pocket, Nora. If we swing, we cannot miss.”

“What about Blake?” I asked, a thought suddenly striking me. “Blake was at the house when I came back from the funeral. He was filming me. But on Monday night—the night before the murder—he was bragging on social media about getting a brand-new watch.”

Miller leaned forward. “What kind of watch?”

“A Rolex Submariner. Dad’s watch.”

Miller froze. “David’s watch wasn't on his body when we found him. The coroner’s report noted blunt trauma to his wrist where his watch had been violently torn off.”

I remembered Blake’s wrist on the driveway. Beneath his designer cuff, a gleaming gold band with a distinctive scratch on the bezel—the scratch Dad got when he helped me build my treehouse when I was ten.

“Blake didn't buy that watch,” I said, my voice shaking with rage. “He was with Grant. Or Grant gave it to him as a trophy.”