I read the anonymous message until the words seemed to lose their meaning. Daniel Mercer had not simply disappeared from an old business record. Someone had arranged his transfer, connected the payment to Grandpa's financial affairs, and kept his whereabouts concealed. Now, after seventeen years of unanswered questions about Rebecca, I was beginning to suspect that the same people had been manipulating events long before my parents left me at Grandpa's house.
Mr. Harrison placed the photograph of Daniel beside the letter from Grandpa. He compared the dates on both documents, then opened the folder containing the records from the trust. The letter had been written years before my birth, when Grandpa was still involved in several private investment arrangements. It described a disagreement over the management of an account and mentioned a person who had been authorized to review its transactions.
The name appeared in the final paragraph.
Peter Shaw.
I leaned closer. Grandpa had known Peter long before Richard hired him as a consultant. Their relationship had not been limited to the company or the financial transfers that followed Rebecca's disappearance. Peter had once been involved in an investment arrangement connected to Grandpa's business, and Daniel Mercer had apparently been part of the same network.
“Why didn't Grandpa tell me?” I asked.
Mr. Harrison turned the page over, searching for additional notes. “He may not have known how much of this was connected to Rebecca when he first discovered the financial discrepancies. The documents show that he became concerned about the account years before her disappearance. We need to establish when he realized the two matters were connected.”
I remembered Grandpa sitting at his desk late at night, reading documents beneath the green-shaded lamp. When I was a child, I had assumed he was managing ordinary investments or paying bills. He would close the folders whenever I entered and ask whether I had finished my homework. I had never questioned why he sometimes looked so worried.
Now I wondered whether those evenings had been spent tracing the same financial trail that had eventually led him to Rebecca.
Mr. Harrison examined the trust records more carefully. A payment had been made from an investment account shortly before Daniel's hospital transfer. The transaction had been authorized by a representative acting under an old agreement, but the signature was difficult to read. A second document referred to an emergency arrangement intended to protect an unnamed beneficiary.
“Could Daniel have been that beneficiary?” I asked.
“Possibly. But we shouldn't assume that until we identify the account and establish why the arrangement was created.”
The phrase unnamed beneficiary unsettled me. Grandpa had spent years protecting me, but the records suggested he might also have been protecting someone else. If Daniel had been moved because he knew who controlled the account, perhaps Grandpa had helped him disappear for his own safety. If so, the anonymous message's claim that someone close to the family had betrayed the arrangement became more troubling.
I asked Mr. Harrison to contact the financial specialist and request a complete review of the older trust documents. He agreed, then called Thomas Reed to ask whether he remembered Daniel Mercer from the company's early years.
Thomas arrived that afternoon. When he saw Daniel's photograph on the desk, he rubbed his thumb against his watch and went silent.
“You recognize him,” I said.
“I recognize the face,” he replied. “I didn't know him well, but I remember him visiting the office before Richard's company expanded. He used to meet privately with your grandfather.”
“Did you know they were business partners?”
“Not exactly. I knew they were involved in an investment arrangement, but Richard never explained the details. He said Daniel was difficult to work with and that Grandpa had made a mistake trusting him.”
I thought of Richard's handwritten note: He trusted the wrong person, and that person was closer than he ever imagined.
At the time, I had assumed the sentence referred to someone who had betrayed Grandpa in the financial investigation. Now I wondered whether it referred to Daniel, Peter, Richard, or someone whose role had not yet emerged.
Thomas examined the old letter from Grandpa and confirmed that he had seen similar documents in the company's records. He remembered Peter warning Richard that the investment account was not entirely under his control. Richard had been furious, insisting that the money had been promised to him.
“Did Daniel disappear before Rebecca was injured?” Mr. Harrison asked.
Thomas nodded. “I believe he stopped coming to the office several months earlier. Richard told everyone he had moved overseas, but I never saw a resignation letter or a formal transfer of responsibilities.”
That timeline suggested Daniel's disappearance was not simply a consequence of the hospital incident. He might have been missing before Rebecca uncovered the financial discrepancies, and his absence might have been one of the reasons she began examining the accounts.
Thomas also remembered that Grandpa had once asked him whether Richard had retained copies of the old investment records. Thomas had said he didn't know, and Grandpa had warned him to keep any documents he still possessed.
“He seemed worried,” Thomas said. “Not angry. Worried that someone had found a way to use the account without permission.”
After Thomas left, Mr. Harrison contacted the former administrator named in the hospital records. The administrator had retired and moved to another province, but his former assistant provided a forwarding address. A formal request was sent asking him to preserve any records relating to the transfers of Rebecca Lane and Daniel Mercer.
Meanwhile, the financial specialist found a reference to a private care facility that had operated under a different name during the period in question. The facility's ownership had changed twice, and its historical records were held by a successor organization. Mr. Harrison requested access to the archived admissions index.
The first response was limited. The organization confirmed that a patient matching Daniel's identifying information had been transferred to the facility, but the file was incomplete. The admission had been recorded under a temporary identity, and the person listed as the authorizing contact was not Daniel's relative.
It was a name I recognized.
Margaret Bennett.
I stared at the screen.
Again, Margaret's name had appeared where someone else's identity should have been. She had signed Rebecca's transfer authorization, and now the records suggested that she had also been connected to Daniel's admission. The pattern was becoming too consistent to dismiss as coincidence.
“Did she know Daniel personally?” I asked.
Mr. Harrison said we would need to ask her. He also warned that the archived index might contain administrative errors. We could not conclude that Margaret had arranged Daniel's disappearance simply because her name appeared on a form.
But the question had become unavoidable.
That evening, I visited Rebecca and showed her Daniel's photograph again. She studied it for a long time before reaching for my hand.
“Grandpa,” she whispered.
“Yes. Grandpa knew him.”
She nodded, then tapped the photograph twice.
“Promise.”
I leaned closer. “Did Grandpa promise to help Daniel?”
Rebecca's eyes filled with tears. She nodded again.
The answer was not enough to establish what had happened, but it confirmed that Daniel's connection to Grandpa had been more personal than I had understood. Rebecca seemed to remember an arrangement involving a promise, perhaps one made before her fall or during the days when she was trying to protect me.
I asked whether she remembered where Daniel had gone.
She closed her eyes and struggled to speak.
“North.”
“Did he go north?”
She nodded weakly.
Before I could ask another question, she grew tired and the nurse encouraged her to rest. I thanked her and promised to return the following day.
On the drive home, I thought about the word she had given me. North was not an address, but it was the first geographical clue Rebecca had offered. Daniel might have been transferred to a facility in another region, or the word might refer to a place he had visited before his disappearance.
Mr. Harrison began searching the old company records for references to facilities and addresses north of the city. Several names appeared, but none could be linked confidently to Daniel.
Then, just before midnight, the unknown number sent another message.
Daniel is alive. He has been waiting for someone to ask the right question. Grandpa promised him that the records would be protected, but he never told him who would eventually inherit the responsibility.
I sat up in bed and read the message again.
If Daniel was alive, he might be able to explain the account, the second transfer, and the hospital arrangements. He might also know why Rebecca had been hidden and why Grandpa had never told me about their relationship.
I forwarded the message to Mr. Harrison. He replied that we should preserve it and avoid contacting anyone based solely on the anonymous sender's claims. The next morning, he would ask the financial specialist to identify possible locations associated with the old care facility and the trust arrangement.
For the first time, I felt that the investigation might lead to someone who could answer the questions that documents alone could not resolve.
But one question troubled me more than the others.
If Daniel had been alive all these years, why had he waited until now to speak?
Click here to continue reading: PART 18: A Message From the Man Grandpa Had Tried to Protect Led Me to a Quiet Northern Town Where the Missing Years Finally Began to Make Sense
The Parents Who Left Me Behind Returned After Seventeen Years, Certain That Grief Had Made Me Easy to Push Aside
Part 17 of 20
