Chapter 4 - Unearthing the Skeletons
I did not go to a hotel as David demanded.
Instead,
I packed a single duffel bag,
walked out of the Arlington estate,
and drove straight to a small,
quiet motel on the outskirts of the city.
Sitting on the edge of the lumpy mattress,
I plugged my laptop into the unstable desk lamp outlet and opened the encrypted folder containing the audio file.
I knew that relying on David or appealing to the Vance family's moral compass was a fool's errand.
They were insulated by wealth,
power,
and decades of absolute impunity.
If I wanted justice,
I had to dig up the history they had so carefully buried.
I started with local court archives,
accessible through public online databases and historical news subscriptions.
Typing ‘Arthur Vance’ into the search bar yielded hundreds of corporate filings,
charity boards,
and high-society profiles.
Then I added keywords: ‘investigation’,
‘lawsuit’,
‘missing’,
‘accident’.
Most results were dead ends,
scrubbed clean by high-priced legal teams over the years.
But scrolling past the first five pages of sanitized PR pieces,
I found a scanned PDF from a local newspaper dated twenty-two years ago.
The headline read: *A Arlington Executive's Assistant Hospitalized After Mysterious Overdose at Vance Manor.
*
My breath hitched in my throat as I clicked on the blurry scan.
The article detailed how a twenty-four-year-old administrative assistant named Clara Jenkins,
employed directly by Arthur Vance,
had been rushed to Arlington General Hospital from the Vance residence.
She had suffered acute intoxication from an undisclosed sedative administered during a late-night work meeting at the estate.
According to the brief report,
Clara had survived,
but the investigation was abruptly closed within forty-eight hours.
The police department cited an accidental prescription medication mix-up.
Two weeks later,
public records showed that Clara Jenkins had abruptly resigned,
broken her employment contract,
and relocated out of state with a substantial,
undisclosed financial settlement.
My hands trembled as I read the details.
It wasn't an isolated incident.
Arthur had done this before.
He had targeted young women working within his orbit,
using sedatives and intimidation,
securing their silence through hush money and legal threats backed by the family fortune.
I needed to find Clara Jenkins.
If she was still alive,
her testimony combined with my audio recording would completely demolish the Vance family's facade.
I spent the next three hours cross-referencing old social security numbers,
marriage records,
and property registries using public investigative tools.
It was tedious,
frustrating work,
complicated by common names and dead links.
Just as my eyes began to burn from staring at the glowing screen,
I found a matching record in Raleigh,
North Carolina.
A woman named Clara Vance-Jenkins was listed as a botanical nursery owner.
I checked her age and previous employment history—it matched perfectly.
Without hesitation,
I grabbed my car keys,
tossed my duffel bag into the backseat of my sedan,
and pointed my headlights south toward North Carolina.
The drive took six agonizing hours through the dead of night,
the miles blurring past in a relentless stream of highway lights.
By the time I reached Raleigh,
the morning sun was just beginning to burn through the coastal mist.
I located the nursery tucked away on a quiet residential street,
surrounded by rows of vibrant green ferns and blooming hydrangeas.
A woman in her mid-forties with streaks of grey in her dark hair was tending to a rack of potted orchids near the front entrance.
I parked my car,
May you like
took a deep breath to steady my frayed nerves,
and walked up the gravel path toward her.
