Chapter 11 - THE TRAP AT GRACE
Police still had not located Redd, and Simon continued denying any knowledge of the security contractor’s movements. Elena decided they needed Simon to reveal where the original evidence went.
With Hall and federal investigators now involved, they created a controlled leak. Ray called Simon from a monitored phone and said Elena had found the original restitution ledger inside Grace Church. He claimed she planned to give it to prosecutors after a memorial service the following morning.
Simon reacted exactly as Daniel’s notes predicted. He did not ask whether the ledger was authentic. He asked where inside the church Elena found it.
Ray pretended not to know.
That night, surveillance teams watched Grace Church.
At 1:17 a.m., a man entered through a side door using a copied maintenance key. He went directly to the small archive room near the vestry and began opening locked cabinets.
Police arrested him before he left.
The man was not Marcus Redd.
He was an investigator employed by Vale Security Services.
His phone contained a message from a prepaid number instructing him to retrieve “the Mercer book” and destroy anything marked with Daniel’s handwriting.
The prepaid number had contacted Simon’s personal phone nine times over the previous month.
Simon’s lawyers argued that anyone could have used it.
Then the arrested investigator asked for counsel and stopped talking.
The trap proved Simon’s network was still actively searching for the evidence, but the complication came almost immediately. Ray received a call from his ex-wife.
Their teenage daughter had been approached outside school by two men who told her “her father needed to stop lying about Uncle Daniel.”
Nobody touched her.
Nobody needed to.
Ray broke.
He told Elena he could not continue cooperating publicly until his daughter was somewhere safe. Federal investigators arranged protection, but Ray still refused to sign the affidavit they needed before the emergency probate hearing.
“You’re doing it again,” Elena said.
“I know.”
“You’re letting him scare you into helping him.”
“I know.”
Ray looked physically ill. “You don’t have a child old enough to walk home alone.”
“I have a six-year-old whose father is in the ground.”
The sentence stopped him.
Elena did not ask him again.
She walked into the emergency hearing without Ray’s affidavit.
Simon’s attorneys attacked the evidence as circumstantial. Northbridge records were old. Daniel participated in transfers. Ray’s accusations were unreliable. The church intruder had no proven direct instruction from Simon.
The judge found the conflict concerning but refused to permanently remove Simon as executor without a fuller hearing.
The Halcyon board vote was delayed only forty-eight hours.
Simon still had temporary authority over Daniel’s shares.
Outside court, Simon approached Elena with his attorneys several steps behind him.
“This can end.”
Elena looked at him.
“You sign the estate release, I resign as executor after the sale, and Noah receives more money than Daniel could have built in three lifetimes.”
“My husband died.”
“Your husband made dangerous choices.”
“Did you have him killed?”
Simon’s expression barely changed. “Be careful what you accuse people of when your only witness is a frightened brother who helped sign the same documents.”
He walked away.
Elena realized the trap had revealed something useful but not enough.
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Simon was still winning the one fight that mattered most to him.
The sale.
