Chapter 3 - The Blue FolderI hadn’t entered Rebecca’s bedroom since our marriage ended.
Now I stood in the doorway with Detective Ortiz while two evidence technicians photographed every drawer, closet shelf, and cardboard box.
There was no blue folder.
There wasn’t much of anything useful.
Someone had searched the room before us.
At first glance, it didn’t look disturbed.
But Rebecca had always folded sweaters with almost obsessive precision.
Now they were stacked unevenly.
Her desk drawers were closed, but their contents had been tossed inside.
The small wooden jewelry box my mother gave her for our tenth anniversary sat upside down.
“You think Travis searched it?” I asked.
“Possibly.”
“Richard?”
“Possibly.”
I hated that word.
I hated how calmly police officers could say it when my ex-wife had been missing for seventy hours.
“What exactly did Rebecca do for Vale?”
“She was senior accounting manager,” I said. “Before that, financial analyst.”
“For how long?”
“Seven years.”
Ortiz looked around.
“People in accounting notice things.”
It clicked.
Money.
The gray-haired man arguing about money.
Something Rebecca refused to return.
The blue folder.
“What if she discovered something?”
Ortiz gave me a look that meant she had reached the same conclusion.
We searched the house for another hour.
Nothing.
Then Noah found it.
He had been discharged into my custody temporarily while Ava remained hospitalized. Denise thought keeping him away from the investigation was best.
Unfortunately, nine-year-olds don’t care much about adult plans.
He walked into the bedroom holding a plastic dinosaur.
“Dad?”
“Buddy, you’re supposed to be with Denise.”
“I know where Mom hides stuff.”
Everyone went silent.
Noah pointed toward the hall.
“Come on.”
He led us into his bedroom.
The room looked painfully normal.
Minecraft posters.
Baseball glove.
Dirty socks.
He climbed onto his bed and reached behind the headboard.
“Mom said nobody looks behind kids’ furniture because grown-ups think all we hide is candy.”
He pulled out a blue plastic document sleeve.
Ortiz stared.
“That’s it.”
Inside were photocopies.
Invoices.
Bank transfers.
Property records.
Emails.
At first, I understood none of it.
Then I saw numbers circled in red.
Payments from Vale Development to seven subcontracting firms.
Those companies appeared to have different names.
But every payment eventually led to the same holding company.
Marwick Holdings LLC.
I knew that name.
“My old house.”
Ortiz looked at me.
“What?”
“The house Rebecca and I owned when we were married. We sold it four years ago.”
I pointed at an address on one document.
“That’s the registered address.”
We drove there.
The new owner answered wearing paint-covered overalls.
“No business here,” he said.
“Do you ever get mail for Marwick Holdings?”
He laughed.
“All the time. Drives me crazy. Previous owners must’ve had some company.”
They hadn’t.
At least not knowingly.
Which meant someone had registered a shell corporation using our former address.
Ortiz obtained more records.
By evening, the picture became uglier.
Marwick Holdings had received nearly $4.6 million over five years.
Invoices described excavation, electrical work, structural engineering.
Several construction sites listed in those invoices had never existed.
The money moved again after reaching Marwick.
Some went overseas.
Some went into property.
Some disappeared through other companies.
And one name appeared repeatedly as an authorized signatory.
Rebecca Turner.
My ex-wife.
I stared at the screen.
“No.”
“Mark—”
“She didn’t do this.”
Ortiz leaned back.
“I’m not accusing her.”
“Her signature is forged.”
“Maybe.”
I nearly slammed my hand against the desk.
“There’s that word again.”
“And it’s an important one,” she said.
Her voice remained calm.
“Right now, Rebecca could be a victim, a witness, a participant, or some combination. We don’t decide which story feels best. We find what happened.”
I hated hearing it.
But she was right.
Later, I returned to the hospital.
Ava was sitting up.
Color had returned to her cheeks.
When she saw me, she smiled.
“Daddy.”
I kissed her forehead.
“You scared me, bug.”
“Sorry.”
“Never apologize for getting sick.”
Noah sat beside her watching cartoons.
For twenty minutes, I pretended our family was ordinary.
Then Ava said something.
“Mommy was crying.”
I turned off the television.
“When?”
“Before she went away.”
“What did she say?”
Ava shrugged.
“She hugged us.”
Noah looked confused.
“She didn’t hug me.”
“Yes, she did,” Ava insisted. “When you were getting water.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
Ava thought hard.
“She said Daddy would know.”
“Know what?”
“She said…” Ava squinted. “She said tell Daddy the lighthouse is still ours.”
I stopped breathing.
The lighthouse.
Rebecca and I had spent our honeymoon on the North Carolina coast.
We’d rented a cottage near an abandoned lighthouse.
Years later, whenever our marriage was struggling, we had a phrase.
Go back to the lighthouse.
It meant return to the beginning.
Remember who we were before mortgages, arguments, careers, disappointments.
But there was something else.
At that cottage, we had buried a cheap metal box beneath the porch as a joke.
Inside were letters to our future selves.
Photos.
Our wedding vows.
And a spare key Rebecca had jokingly called “the key to our future.”
The cottage had belonged to my uncle.
It still did.
I stood so fast my chair scraped the floor.
Ortiz, who had just entered, saw my face.
“What?”
“I know where she put whatever she didn’t want Richard to find.”
Three hours later, Ortiz and I were driving toward the coast.
But somebody else knew about the lighthouse.
Because when we arrived at my uncle’s cottage shortly before midnight, the porch boards had already been torn apart.
The metal box was gone.
May you like
And written across the front door in black spray paint were four words:
STOP LOOKING FOR REBECCA.
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