Chapter 43 - The Ledger Without an Owner
The following afternoon Samuel received a call from the regional archives office.
"We found another financial ledger."
"It wasn't cataloged."
"It has no registered owner."
An hour later the book lay open across Samuel's conference table.
Unlike the warehouse ledger, this one contained no initials.
Every transaction listed full names.
Dates.
Amounts.
Signatures.
Daniel immediately noticed a familiar entry.
His very first overseas salary.
The amount matched perfectly.
But the recipient wasn't Rebecca.
It wasn't Lily either.
It had been deposited into an account belonging to an organization called:
The Hawthorne Preservation Society.
Samuel searched every public database available.
Nothing.
No nonprofit registration.
No tax records.
No corporate filings.
It was as though the organization had never officially existed.
Yet millions of dollars had passed through its accounts.
Near the back of the ledger, one final page had been folded inward.
Daniel carefully unfolded it.
A photograph slipped onto the table.
The image showed seven people standing in front of the Carter house nearly twenty years earlier.
Daniel recognized only three faces.
His grandfather.
The elderly man from the estate.
And...
To his complete astonishment...
A much younger Victor Hayes.
Samuel turned the photograph over.
On the reverse side someone had written in neat blue ink:
Meeting No. 1 — All seven members present.
May you like
Beneath that sentence appeared a handwritten note that none of them had seen before.
Only three remain alive.
