He reached into his coat and pulled out a small black leather notebook.

“What is that?” I asked.

“My father’s logbook,” Daniel said.

“He kept record of every dollar that came into the Waverly Lane trust from 1980 until he died.”

He opened it, revealing columns of neat, faded blue ink.

“Claire thought she burned all of these,” Daniel said.

“But my father kept a second set in the crawlspace behind the cellar chimney.”

Megan looked up from the trunk, her eyes red and swollen.

“Is that why you came back?” she asked.

“To take the house?”

“I came back to clear my father’s name,” Daniel said.

“Claire framed him for the first shortage in ninety-four.”

“She made everyone believe he ran off with the maintenance fund.”

I looked at the neat columns of numbers in the notebook.

The entries showed regular withdrawals, always just under the amount that would trigger an automatic bank audit.

“She’s been draining it for thirty years,” I said.

“Yes,” Daniel said.

“And she used Ethan to cover the tracks once she realized you were going to inherit the title.”