An auditor.
She pulled public property records. She checked corporate filings. She examined zoning applications. Then she opened something she had ignored for years: her own bakery invoices.
The weekly Ashford order wasn't coming from Delphine personally.
It was being paid by an LLC.
The same LLC had filed a zoning application three months after Margo's mother died.
The proposed development sat directly across from Boone's Bakery.
Margo stared at the document.
Then she found something worse.
The Ashford family had been trying to acquire the entire block.
Her bakery sat on the most valuable parcel.
Suddenly, those weekly cake orders looked different.
They hadn't been keeping her bakery alive.
They had been documenting a business relationship.
And there was another detail.
The original purchase agreement for her mother's bakery had a handwritten notation referring to a storage unit.
Margo recognized the number immediately.
Unit 214.
She had been paying $89 every month for twenty-seven months because she couldn't bring herself to sort through her mother's belongings.
That night, Margo drove there.
Inside the dusty unit sat a green metal box.
The lock opened with a key attached to an old envelope.
Inside was a single handwritten paragraph.
At the bottom were two sets of initials.
M.B.
And D.A.
Margo's initials.
And Delphine Ashford's.
But the date was impossible.
Spring 2023.
Months before Margo had ever met Alton.
Margo read the paragraph three times.
Then she called Delphine.
"I found the box."
Silence.
"You knew about it."
Another silence.
Finally, Delphine said, "Your mother asked me to keep it safe."
Margo's hands went cold.
The truth was nothing like the story she had imagined.
In 2023, Margo's mother had discovered that developers were trying to buy the West End block. She knew Boone's Bakery would eventually become the target.