Chapter 6 - LEAH MORGAN
Leah Morgan did not flinch when I placed Nathan’s notebook on her conference table.
That steadied me.
She was in her early forties, precise, unsentimental, and immediately focused on preservation.
“Before we discuss theories,” she said, “tell me who knows you opened the box.”
“Cole and Helen know it exists.”
“Do they know you accessed it today?”
“I don’t know.”
“Assume yes.”
Fair.
She photographed every item, logged the originals, and had her paralegal create forensic copies of the USB before any file was opened on an ordinary computer.
Again, fair.
Then she started with the notebook.
Nathan had listed invoice numbers, vendor names, payment dates, and handwritten notes beside several entries:
No service provided.
Address is mailbox.
Cole approved.
Why is Mother signing this?
Leah’s eyes narrowed.
“Mother?”
“Helen.”
She nodded.
The first apparent shell vendor was Ridgeway Environmental Services.
The second was Hollow Creek Supply.
The notebook showed both billing Mercer Utility repeatedly for work Nathan believed never occurred.
Total questionable payments over fourteen months: just over $486,000.
I stared.
“He never told me.”
“Maybe he was still proving it to himself.”
That sounded like Nathan.
He hated accusing people without documents, especially family.
Then Leah opened the black USB copy.
Folders appeared exactly as Nathan’s label promised.
Financials.
Porch.
Kitchen.
The Financials folder matched the notebook: PDFs, spreadsheets, copies of invoices, and email exports that appeared to show Cole pushing certain vendor approvals through quickly whenever Nathan was traveling to medical appointments.
Then Leah opened Porch.
On March 14, the porch camera showed Cole arriving with a banker’s box. Nathan met him at the front door. The clip had no audio, but their argument was obvious. Cole pointed toward the house. Nathan shook his head and blocked the doorway.
Then Cole said something that made Nathan’s face go hard.
Cole left. Nathan stood on the porch for several seconds afterward like a man realizing something he didn’t want to realize.
Leah wrote down the timestamp.
Then we opened Kitchen.
March 19 existed.
March 20 existed.
March 21 was missing.
Not corrupted.
Not mislabeled.
Gone.
My stomach dropped.
Nathan’s note had predicted it.
If the kitchen clip is missing, someone erased it.
Leah leaned back.
“That matters.”
“It proves Cole did it?”
“No.”
I hated that answer.
“It proves Nathan expected the clip might disappear and thought that disappearance itself would mean something.”
Then she asked the better question.
“Who had access to the home camera system?”
I counted silently.
Nathan.
Me.
Cole, briefly, during the month Nathan was hospitalized once and we needed help with deliveries.
And Helen knew the backup password because she once checked the front porch while housesitting.
Leah didn’t look surprised.
“Then we preserve the system logs before anyone else remembers to erase those too.”
Before I left, she said one more thing.
“Evelyn, if you want criminal review of Nathan’s death, we need facts—not certainty, not grief, and not revenge.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I thought of Wren in the mud.
Cole grabbing her.
Nathan’s letter.
May you like
“No,” I said. “But I want to.”
📖 The missing kitchen clip didn’t prove murder by itself, but Nathan predicted its disappearance so precisely that the next thing I needed wasn’t another suspicion—it was every digital trace of who removed it. 👇
