Simon's Warning

I called Simon from the landline in the small antechamber off the main hall, my back pressed against the closed door. My cell phone felt compromised, a digital leash I couldn't trust. The dial tone was a comforting, old-fashioned hum.

"Blackwood Law," the receptionist chirped. "How may I direct your call?"

"Simon Blackwood, please. It's Helen Vance."

There was a pause, then a series of clicks.

"Helen?" Simon’s voice was warm, professional, the voice of a man who solved problems for a living. "To what do I owe the pleasure? Everything alright with the audit prep?"

"I can't find the 1995 records," I said, cutting straight to the chase. "The entire fiscal year is missing from the main filing cabinet."

Silence. A long, heavy silence that felt less like a pause and more like a calculation.

"Missing?" he repeated, his tone shifting subtly. "Are you sure? Richard mentioned he was reorganizing the archives."

"I checked the basement. I checked the attic. The box is gone, Simon. And it's the year the trust was restructured. If the auditor asks for the basis of the current assets, I have nothing to show him."

"I see." I could hear the rustle of papers on his end. Or maybe he was just stalling. "Well, that is... unfortunate. But not insurmountable. We have digital backups of the summaries."

"Summaries aren't source documents," I said, my voice rising. "I need the original invoices. The bank statements. The medical bills."

"Medical bills?" His voice sharpened. "What medical bills?"

"Arthur's," I lied, my eyes squeezing shut. "From after Julian's accident. There were... expenses. The funeral costs. The settlement with the county for the bridge repair."

"Helen," he said, his voice dropping to that confidential, patronizing register men use when they want women to stop asking questions. "You're under a lot of stress. Richard told me you've been... anxious. About the audit."

"I am anxious because the records are missing."

"They aren't missing. They're just... archived securely. For liability reasons." He paused. "And frankly, your role as Guardian is to ensure Arthur's daily comfort, not to forensic audit thirty-year-old transactions. Leave the legalities to me."

"It's my signature on the tax returns, Simon. It's my name on the line."

"And it's your husband's name on the deed," he countered, the warmth gone now. "And your children's inheritance in the trust. Don't pull threads you can't re-weave, Helen."

The threat was veiled, but it was there. Like a shark fin breaking the surface of calm water.

"Is that legal advice?" I asked.

"It's family advice," he said. "Go have a glass of wine. Wait for Richard to come home. And stop looking for problems that don't exist."

"What about Julian's expenses?" I blurted out.

The silence this time was absolute.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You said 'Julian's expenses' earlier," I said, my heart pounding. "Before you corrected yourself. What expenses does a dead man have?"

There was a click. Then the dial tone.

He hung up.

I stared at the receiver in my hand. Simon Blackwood, the man who had been the Vance family consigliere for forty years, had just hung up on me.

He wasn't just stalling. He was scared.

I hung up the phone and walked out into the main hall. The house felt huge and empty, a mausoleum of secrets.

If Simon was scared, it meant I was close.

I looked up the grand staircase toward Arthur's room. If anyone knew where the bodies were buried—literally and metaphorically—it was the man who had dug the graves.

But Arthur was locked in the prison of his own mind.

Unless he wasn't.

I remembered the clarity in his eyes yesterday. *He's still hungry.*

I started up the stairs. If the records were gone, I needed a witness. And the only witness left alive was the man everyone thought was senile.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text message.

*Unknown Number: Be careful, Helen. Curiosity killed the cat. But the audit will kill the husband.*