She opened the box. Inside lay a flash drive with a dated label, an old photograph, and a folded card written in Henry Grant's unmistakably sloping hand. The photograph showed Henry and Richard Vail standing together in front of a warehouse under construction, both smiling with the careless confidence of men who believed the years ahead belonged to them.
Victoria turned the photograph over. In black ink, Henry had written: If anything happens to me, don't trust the numbers. Trust the person who notices what everyone else ignores.
Daniel read it carefully. He did not interpret the message as a prophecy about himself. Henry had been a man who valued practical judgment and had grown suspicious of reports that contradicted what workers could see. The note sounded like a reminder intended for his daughter rather than a mystery designed for a stranger to solve.
"He wrote this three days before he died," Victoria whispered. "I recognize the pen. I recognize the date he put in the corner."
"Did he tell you something was wrong?"
"He asked me to come home for dinner. I was in Chicago. I told him I'd come the following week." She looked down at the photograph. "There wasn't a following week."
Daniel did not say she could not have known. It was probably true, but it would not help. He simply stood beside her while the elevator opened and closed behind them and the building continued its nighttime routines.
They asked company counsel to preserve the original items and make forensic copies of the digital records before anyone examined them. The drive contained partial board minutes, scanned contract approvals, and notes that appeared to document Henry's growing concern about emergency transportation spending. Some files were incomplete. Several referred to physical originals stored off-site because Henry no longer trusted the accuracy of the searchable archive.
One note was dated four days before his death. It contained a question in the margin of a payment summary: Where did the freight actually go? Beneath that, in the same hand, Henry had written, Richard says resolved. Get the original signatures before board review.
Victoria sat back when she read it. Her father had been asking the same question Daniel had asked. He had been asking it before she inherited the company and before the new director ever walked through the doors. The connection made her stomach turn.
"Do you think Richard knew?" she said.
"I think somebody knew there was a problem and was trying to find out what it meant. The notes don't tell us what happened to your father."
"He was afraid," she said.
Daniel looked at the last line in Henry's notebook, where the handwriting became uneven. "He might have been," he answered. "But don't fill in the blanks before we find the records. If this matters enough to have hurt your family, it matters enough to get right."