Chapter 6 - THE WOODEN BEADS
Arthur.
The name hit me like a physical blow. Arthur, the loyal carpenter. Arthur, the man who had flipped the chair. Arthur, who had been by my mother's side for decades.
"That's impossible," I said, backing away from the desk. "Arthur loved my mother."
"Arthur loved the company," Rebecca corrected, her voice urgent. "Margaret, think about it. Charles is a coward. He couldn't pull off switching medications or forging a DNR without someone on the inside. Arthur has keys to the workshop. He had access to Evelyn's safe."
I grabbed the manila envelope and the child's drawing, leaving the wooden rosary on the desk.
I didn't wait for the elevator. I ran down three flights of stairs, my pulse pounding in my ears.
I drove to my mother's old workshop on the outskirts of Milwaukee. It was a rustic, barn-like structure filled with the smell of sawdust and linseed oil.
Arthur's truck was parked outside.
I pushed the heavy wooden doors open. The workshop was dark, save for a single overhead lamp illuminating the main workbench.
Arthur was standing there, calmly polishing a piece of mahogany.
"I wondered how long it would take you, Margaret," he said without looking up.
"Did you kill her?" I asked, my voice echoing in the cavernous room.
Arthur stopped polishing. He set the rag down and turned to face me. His weathered face looked older than I remembered, etched with deep lines of exhaustion.
"Your mother was going to destroy this company, Margaret. She was going to give half of it to Thomas Hayes's daughter, and the other half to you."
"It belonged to me!" I screamed.
"You don't know how to run a business!" Arthur snapped, his calm facade breaking. "Charles and I built the supply chain! We negotiated the real estate! Evelyn was going to give away our life's work out of some misguided sense of guilt over Thomas Hayes!"
"So you helped Charles steal it. You poisoned her."
"I didn't poison her," Arthur said coldly. "I just made sure she slept soundly enough that she couldn't call her lawyers. The stroke was an act of God. I simply... didn't call the ambulance in time."
A wave of nausea washed over me. I gripped the edge of a table to steady myself.
"And the chair?" I asked. "Why did you reveal the carving at the gala?"
Arthur smiled, a bitter, hollow expression. "Because Charles got greedy. He promised me 30% of the company once he framed Rebecca and liquidated the assets. But yesterday, I found out he was planning to leave me with nothing and take the offshore accounts for himself. If I was going down, I was taking him with me."
He reached into his leather apron and pulled out a heavy, iron crowbar.
"But I can't let you leave with those hospital records, Margaret."
Before I could react, Arthur lunged forward, swinging the crowbar toward my head.
I ducked, the heavy iron smashing into the workbench behind me, splintering the wood. I scrambled backward, desperately searching for a weapon, but Arthur was blocking the door.
"Mom! Get down!"
The scream came from the loft above.
May you like
I looked up. Olivia was standing on the second-floor balcony, holding one of my mother's heavy brass lamps.
And she hurled it straight down at Arthur.
