Chapter 3 - The Workshop on Elm Creek
The drive from Mom’s manicured subdivision in Indian Hill down to the Elm Creek industrial district took twenty-two minutes.
Every mile felt like shedding a layer of poison.
I sat behind the wheel of my battered seven-year-old Subaru, the fabric of my dress still smelling faintly of artificial orange citrus. My hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turned white.
Whitaker Fine Woodworking sat on a four-acre parcel bordering Elm Creek. It was a massive, two-story brick building constructed in 1928, flanked by two modern steel lumber drying kilns. To anyone passing by on the state route, it looked like an ordinary manufacturing plant. But to the architectural world, it was sacred ground. Dad had specialized in bespoke, historical millwork. His artisans could duplicate eighteenth-century French crown molding, restore hand-carved mahogany altars for gothic cathedrals, and produce dining tables so flawless they were purchased by embassies in Washington.
I pulled into the gravel lot. Dad’s parking spot—marked with a hand-carved sign reading *A. Whitaker - Master Craftsman*—sat empty.
Beside it was a battered Ford F-250 belonging to Caleb Vance.
Caleb was forty-two, six-foot-two, with broad shoulders, work-hardened hands, and an unshakeable moral compass. He was also the older brother of Greg Vance—Harper’s husband. Unlike Greg, who had spent his life chasing get-rich-quick schemes, Caleb had apprenticed under Dad since he was nineteen years old. He was our shop foreman, the heart of the manufacturing floor, and the only man Dad trusted to calibrate the five-axis CNC routers.
As I climbed out of the car, the metal service door creaked open. Caleb stepped out onto the loading dock, wiping his hands on a blue shop rag. He wore safety glasses pushed up onto his unruly brown hair.
When he saw my face—and the enormous orange stain running down the front of my dress—his jaw tightened.
“Becca,” he called out, his deep voice carrying over the low hum of the dust-collection cyclones. “What happened to you?”
I walked up the concrete steps to the loading dock. The familiar smell of kiln-dried white oak, Danish oil, and clean sawdust washed over me, instantly calming the hurricane in my chest.
“Miles poured soda on me,” I said plainly. “Mom orchestrated it. And Harper laughed.”
Caleb’s expression darkened into pure, lethal disgust. “Those miserable parasites.” He threw his shop rag into a metal bin. “How bad was the reading?”
“Dad made me sole trustee.”
Caleb blinked, stunned. A slow, genuine breath of relief escaped his chest. “Thank God. Arthur actually pulled it off. We were terrified Harper was going to walk in here on Monday morning with an auctioneer.”
“She tried,” I said, stepping past him into the relative warmth of the shop floor. “Caleb, Margaret found three forged checks. Totaling nearly two hundred thousand dollars. The last one was written seventeen days after the funeral.”
Caleb froze in the hallway leading to the front administrative offices. “Seventeen days? Greg told me last week he had suddenly secured funding to pay off his commercial warehouse lease. You don’t think...”
“Harper confessed Mom signed a corporate guarantee putting this entire property up as collateral for Greg’s logistics company,” I replied.
Caleb closed his eyes, his breathing heavy. The muscle in his jaw twitched violently. Greg was his younger brother, but Caleb had spent ten years watching Harper and Greg bleed my father dry with guilt trips and false promises.
“Greg is an idiot,” Caleb muttered, opening his eyes. “Arthur told him six months ago he would never co-sign another note for him. If Harper and my brother took money out of this company’s operational reserves after Arthur died, that isn't just an inheritance fight, Becca. That’s prison time.”
“I know,” I said. “And Margaret is calling the county prosecutor on Monday.”
I led the way down the paneled hallway toward Dad’s private office at the far corner of the building. The office smelled of Dad’s pipe tobacco, aged leather, and floor plans. A large drafting table dominated the center of the room, littered with architectural blueprints for a massive pending contract—the restoration of the historic St. Jude’s Cathedral sanctuary downtown.
Behind the drafting table stood Dad’s fireproof floor safe.
I walked over to the safe, knelt on the worn Persian rug, and spun the heavy steel dial. Dad had given me the combination three nights before he slipped into his final coma: *14 - 32 - 08 - 44*. The birthdates of his four original woodworking apprentices.
With a heavy, satisfying clunk, the internal locking bars retracted. I pulled the heavy door open.
Inside, stacked neatly beside the corporate tax returns from 1985 onward, sat a black moleskin journal and a sealed Manila envelope labeled in Dad’s precise, carpenter's block handwriting:
*FOR REBECCA. WHEN THE WOLVES GATHER.*
My fingers trembled as I pulled the envelope from the safe.
Before I could tear the wax seal, the loud scream of tires peeling across gravel echoed from the front parking lot.
A car door slammed with violent force.
Caleb moved to the window, parting the blinds with two fingers. His body went rigid.
May you like
“Becca,” he said, his voice dropping an octave. “We’ve got a problem. Greg and Harper just pulled up. And Harper’s carrying Dad’s old spare office keys.”
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