I know who the new Mrs. Sawyer will be, and I know why you're marrying her.
500k or I tell him everything.
"So there really was a new Mrs. Sawyer," Hope breathed. "He'd hinted, but no one ever met her. Uncle Edgar and I joked that he found a woman on one of those dating apps."
"Maybe no one ever met her because she was married." I pointed at the last words. “’500k or I tell him everything.’ Who else could the him be?"
"A father?" Hope offered.
Griffen shook his head. "This isn't Victorian England. I'd bet it was a husband. Unless she was underage…" He shook his head again, this time a scowl of disgust twisting his face.
"Ugh. I hope she was married," Hope said, moving the second letter to the top of the pile.
Cutting it a little close, aren't you? You don't have long before you're out of time. Get me the rest of the money or I tell him all your plans. Once he knows the truth, he'll never let her go.
"I'm voting the he is her husband." I racked my brain for any woman I'd ever heard my father mention. I came up with nothing. "We can ask the girls, but I have no clue who he might have been involved with, and Royal wouldn't either. We didn't deal with Prentice much in the last few years. Sterling's the only one who was living here. She might have seen or heard something."
"I'll ask Uncle Edgar again," Hope murmured, pulling up the last letter.
If he finds out what you did to him, what you stole from him, he'll destroy you. Once he knows the truth, there won't be anywhere you can run that he won't find you. 300k more and I'll keep my mouth shut. Pay me and you'll never see me again.
"Is this what I think it is?" Scarlett asked, head tilted to the side as she studied the small sheet of notepaper.
"If you think this could be the motive for our father's murder, then I think you might be right," Griffen said, sitting back in his chair. "I'd almost convinced myself it was about business."
"This looks pretty personal," Scarlett said, "but I'm not sure I'm putting the pieces together. How would Vanessa know about your father's love life when no one else did?"
"No clue," I answered. "But that's nothing new. We don't know much about what was going on. There's no date on these, but I'm guessing this was around the time he started doing all the renovations in the family wing. About three years ago." I looked to Hope.
"That's the only time period when we had any hint there might be a new Mrs. Sawyer," she agreed. "And he hadn't bothered with updating the house until whoever she was came along. I always assumed the two were connected."
"What does this mean?" Scarlett pointed to the words out of time.
"No idea." I shook my head in disgust. "We don't even know all three of these notes are about the same thing. The first two reference a woman, but the third doesn't. It could be about something else."
"Could be," Scarlett mused, "but I doubt it. How connected was Vanessa to Prentice? What are the odds she stumbled onto not one but two separate reasons to blackmail him?"
I hoped Scarlett was right. All we needed was another complication. I shoved the notes into a rough pile. "This doesn't help at all. We have more questions and no real answers."
"I disagree," Griffen said calmly, gathering the loose papers into a stack with the notes and sliding them into the manila envelope. "We know Vanessa was blackmailing our father. We know that when she claimed to know who killed him, she might have been telling the truth. And we know whoever killed them both was a lot smarter than they thought he was."
"It could be a she," Hope added. We all stared at her. "The killer," Hope explained. "It could be a she. We don't know what happened to the mysterious future Mrs. Sawyer. Maybe Prentice pissed her off and she killed him, then killed Vanessa for threatening to expose her."
Thinking it over, I played back my last conversation with Vanessa. "She said, ‘When he finds out I told you, my life won't be worth anything.’" Everyone shifted their gazes from Hope to me. "Vanessa. That morning in the garden, right before she was shot. She said, ‘When he finds out I told you, my life won't be worth anything.’ She was trying to talk me into paying her for the name of Dad's killer. I wish—"
"Don't." Scarlett slid her arm around my waist, her eyes heavy with concern as they met mine. "If you'd talked to her longer or gone to get her the money, you might have been killed, too. We have no idea if the killer had a plan to set you up for her death or if you just had bad timing. If it was the second, he might have shot you, too."