Chapter 9 - The Order of Twelve
“No.”
I said it again.
“No one is interviewing him tonight.”
The investigator, Dana Cho, did not argue.
“That’s your call.”
“Then why is his initial on Evelyn’s ledger?”
“We don’t know.”
Ethan sat in the office library with headphones on, building something out of magnetic tiles.
I could see him through the glass.
Twelve blue tiles.
Twelve green.
Twelve yellow.
My stomach turned.
“Wait.”
I opened the photo of the ledger.
The coded accounts were numbered in groups of twelve.
12-24-36-48.
Ethan arranged things in twelves when anxious.
Everyone in the family knew that.
Evelyn knew it too.
“This is camouflage,” I said.
Dana leaned closer.
“Explain.”
“She used his habit as a key pattern.”
Priya pulled up the transfer data.
Every major movement from the shell accounts happened on dates twelve days apart, with amounts ending in 12, 24, 36, or 48.
Not because Ethan knew the order.
Because Evelyn wanted anyone who noticed the pattern to think he did.
Or to make it look like I had used my son to design it.
Nora swore under her breath.
“That woman planned an insanity defense for the evidence before the evidence existed.”
Dana shook her head. “Not insanity. Plausible alternate authorship.”
I looked through the glass again.
Ethan had switched to eleven tiles.
He was staring at the empty space where the twelfth should go.
I went inside.
He took off his headphones.
“Are we going home?”
“Soon.”
He nodded.
I sat on the carpet beside him.
“Can I ask you something weird?”
“Okay.”
“Did Grandma Evelyn ever ask you about your rows? The groups of twelve?”
He thought.
“She asked why twelve was safe.”
My throat tightened. “What did you say?”
“That clocks have twelve. Eggs. Months.”
“Anything else?”
He shook his head.
Then he paused.
“She gave me a number game.”
“When?”
“At her house.”
“What kind of game?”
“She said if I found the pattern, I could have ice cream.”
He got up, walked to his backpack, and pulled out a folded page.
I almost laughed from shock.
He had kept it because there was a drawing of a fox on the back.
The front showed twelve columns of numbers.
Priya looked at it for maybe three seconds.
Then she sat down.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“These aren’t random.”
She pointed to the columns.
“They’re account-routing fragments.”
Ethan looked confused.
“I didn’t win the ice cream.”
Dana took the page with gloved hands.
At the bottom was Evelyn’s handwriting.
TRY AGAIN. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE THE SMART ONE.
And beneath that, almost hidden in the fold, was another line.
A bank name.
One Priya had never seen before.
St. Aurelia Trust, Zurich.
May you like
Balance unknown.
