Chapter 17 - MY GRANDFATHER’S PRIVATE INVESTIGATION
The North Room Fund contained more than money.
It contained instructions to preserve records.
Grandpa had hired an engineer after the fire.
Not the same contractor Dad used.
An independent forensic electrical specialist named Leonard Price.
Price was dead.
His firm wasn’t.
Rebecca located archived invoices.
Site inspection.
Photographs.
Circuit reconstruction.
Alarm testing.
Fire-origin consultation.
Dad had told investigators the damaged wiring made certainty impossible.
Grandpa apparently didn’t believe him.
The surviving report was incomplete.
Pages one through thirty-one.
Then thirty-seven.
Six pages missing.
“Convenient,” Madison said.
She had come to my apartment because I invited her.
That still felt strange.
A year earlier, she would have arrived without asking.
Now she texted from the lobby.
“Can I come up?”
Small changes.
Real ones.
Rebecca explained that Grandpa’s attorney had stored some materials separately.
“We may still find the missing pages.”
Mom asked:
“Why didn’t William tell me?”
That hurt to hear.
If Grandpa suspected Dad’s story, why allow Mom to spend years believing she caused the fire?
Maybe he hadn’t known enough.
Maybe he had failed too.
No hero fantasies.
Then we read Price’s conclusions.
The fire began inside a wall cavity near the nursery.
Not at the candle table.
Consistent with overheated electrical conductors.
The alarm circuit serving that zone had been disabled intentionally during renovation.
We knew most of that.
Then a new detail:
Two separate bypasses were present.
Dad’s records accounted for one.
A temporary alarm bypass approved because contractors were producing dust.
The second bypass affected the heat detector directly outside the nursery.
Nobody had explained that one.
Madison stared.
“So even if the smoke circuit was down—”
“The heat detector should have triggered,” I said.
“Yes.”
It hadn’t.
There was another signature on the work order.
Not Dad’s.
R. Mercer.
“Who’s that?” Madison asked.
Mom answered.
“Robert Mercer.”
Former vice president of Hale Development.
Dad’s closest friend for thirty years.
The man who had stood beside my hospital bed telling reporters the fire was a tragic household accident.
Robert had retired early five years later.
Moved to Florida.
Never came to another family event.
Rebecca started digging.
Then I noticed a note Grandpa had written in the margin.
Ask why Richard paid Bell but Mercer disappeared.
Thomas Bell had been the contractor Dad paid after the fire.
Mercer?
Nobody publicly connected him to anything.
Madison sat very still.
“Dad protected someone.”
“Maybe.”
“Or someone protected Dad.”
Maybe.
Then Mom whispered:
“Robert was at the investor dinner.”
That mattered.
“Inside the house?”
“All night.”
“Before the fire?”
“Yes.”
“What was he doing?”
Mom frowned.
“He kept going upstairs.”
“Why?”
“He said there was a problem with the guest bathroom.”
Madison looked at me.
North wing.
Same hallway.
The evening suddenly had another adult moving near the nursery before the fire.
May you like
And unlike Dad—
Robert Mercer had vanished from the company shortly afterward.
