Chapter 3 - THE SILVER KEY IN THE UPSTAIRS APARTMENT
I stared at the silver key in Walter’s trembling hand.
“The upstairs apartment?” I whispered.
My parents had lived above the bakery when I was a child. The apartment had been used as storage for the last fifteen years. David had strictly forbidden me from going up there during the renovations, claiming the contractors had removed the floorboards.
“Give me that,” David snapped, lunging for the key.
But Raymond, our baker, stepped directly into David’s path. Raymond was sixty years old, with arms thick from decades of kneading dough.
“Don’t touch him, David,” Raymond growled, his voice a low, protective rumble.
Walter placed the key gently into my palm.
“Go, Carolyn,” Walter said. “I’ll keep them here.”
I turned and walked toward the back hallway.
“Carolyn, stop!” David yelled, panic elevating his voice to a frantic pitch. “There’s nothing up there! It’s a construction zone!”
I ignored him. I gripped my mother’s torn apron in one hand and the silver key in the other.
I pushed through the swinging kitchen doors and reached the narrow wooden staircase leading to the apartment.
David had lied. The stairs weren’t torn up. They were covered in thick, expensive carpet.
I climbed the stairs, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
I reached the apartment door. The old brass knob had been replaced with a modern keypad lock, but the original deadbolt was still intact.
I slid the silver key into the deadbolt. It turned with a smooth, heavy click.
I pushed the door open.
I reached for the light switch.
When the lights flickered on, the breath was knocked entirely out of my lungs.
This wasn’t a storage room. It wasn’t a construction zone.
It was a fully furnished, luxurious penthouse apartment.
Expensive leather furniture filled the living room. A massive flat-screen television hung on the wall. The old floral wallpaper had been replaced with sleek, modern grey paint.
And sitting on the coffee table were framed photographs.
I walked over on trembling legs.
They were pictures of David.
But he wasn’t standing with me. He was standing on a beach with Vanessa.
In another photo, they were standing in front of the bakery, holding up a glass of champagne. The date stamped on the bottom corner was from four years ago.
Four years.
He hadn’t met her during the renovations. He had been living a double life for almost half a decade.
I felt physically sick. I stumbled backward, bumping into a sleek mahogany desk.
As I steadied myself, I noticed something resting on top of a stack of mail.
It was a familiar, dark blue velvet box.
My hands shook as I picked it up. I flipped the lid open.
Inside sat the diamond anniversary earrings my father had given me. The earrings David claimed he had sold to a jeweler to help pay for the new commercial ovens.
He hadn’t sold them. He had given them to his mistress.
Tears of pure, blinding rage spilled down my cheeks.
I looked at the mahogany desk. There were three locked drawers.
I tried the silver key in the top drawer. It didn't fit.
I looked around the room. Helen had told Walter this key "opens the truth." She didn't mean the apartment door. She meant something inside.
I walked into what used to be my childhood bedroom.
The bed was gone, replaced by a massive walk-in closet filled with Vanessa’s designer clothes.
But sitting in the corner, looking entirely out of place in the modern room, was my mother’s old cedar chest.
David must have moved it up here to get it out of the way.
I knelt in front of the chest. The heavy brass padlock was rusted.
I slid the silver key into the lock.
It turned perfectly.
I threw the padlock aside and lifted the heavy wooden lid.
The chest smelled like lavender and old paper.
Inside, resting on top of my mother’s old wedding dress, was a thick manila envelope.
I pulled it out and tore it open.
Dozens of bank statements fluttered onto the floor.
I picked one up. It was a joint account statement in the names of David Bennett and Vanessa Cole.
But it wasn’t the names that made my blood run cold. It was the balance.
And the source of the deposits.
David hadn’t just been cheating on me.
He had been secretly taking out massive life insurance policies on my mother for the last five years.
And the final payout—a sum of 1.2 million dollars—had been deposited the exact day she died.
Before I could fully process the horror, the floorboards creaked behind me.
“I told you not to come up here, Carolyn.”
I turned around.
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David stood in the doorway of the bedroom. And he was holding a heavy, iron fire poker from the living room hearth.
TITLE: The Fire Poker In The Bedroom Doorway
