“That's perfect.”

“Perfect?”

“Yes.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“Why?”

“Please keep talking.”

For the first time, something in her expression changed.

The safe was loaded into a Stonehaven patrol vehicle and taken to the Briar Ridge clubhouse.

Rebecca looked at me.

“You're letting them remove your property?”

“The safe contains old insurance records.”

“You know that?”

“I opened it six months ago.”

Rebecca stared.

“And?”

“I put a tracker inside after someone tried my office door.”

She turned toward me.

“You never told me that.”

“I didn't know it mattered.”

“It matters now.”

I checked my phone.

A small dot moved across the map.

Toward the clubhouse.

Rebecca sighed.

Then smiled despite herself.

“I hate how much I approve of this.”

The Wall My Uncle Told Me Never to Sell

By late afternoon, I brought in a forensic architect named Leah Monroe.

She reviewed photographs of the plans Marianne had been using.

“These aren't county plans.”

“How can you tell?”

“Dimension conventions. Old annotation style. And this stamp.”

She enlarged the photograph.

“It's from Henry's original firm.”

“How old?”

“Twenty-five years. Maybe more.”

“Who would have copies?”

“Henry.”

“The original developer.”

“Possibly the county archives, depending on what was filed.”

She paused.

“But this set is incomplete.”

“How?”

“They're searching east.”

“Is that wrong?”

Leah looked at the house.

“If they're looking for a void, yes.”

She tapped the blueprint.

“There’s unexplained depth on the western section.”

I remembered Henry's words.

Never sell the western wall.

My stomach tightened.

“Show me.”

The wine storage room had survived because Marianne's crew had concentrated on the opposite side of the house.

Behind a built-in rack, Leah found a narrow vertical seam.

Not drywall.

Metal behind plaster.

Then a small mechanical slot concealed beneath a piece of trim.

“No keypad,” she whispered.

“No wiring.”

I stared at it.

A memory surfaced.

My uncle's grandfather clock.

The one I had moved into storage because it was too large for the renovated hallway.

Behind the clock face was a bronze key.

Henry had once told me:

“Don't lose that.”

I had assumed it wound the mechanism.

It didn't.

Forty minutes later, we retrieved the key.

It fit the slot.