👉 Previous Decision: You signed over stewardship of the house to the Municipal Historical Trust.
The administrative hearing at the county building was a somber affair. Evelyn Delancey, now representing the Municipal Historical Trust, stood before the council, a stack of documents in her hand.
“Hollister Holdings LLC,” she began, her voice clear, “was never about building luxury condos. That was a diversion.”
She clicked through a series of public filings, projecting them onto the screen. “Julian arranged to sell the estate at a massive loss. To an industrial developer, solely for demolition.”
A ripple went through the room. Demolish Hollister House? It made no sense, given its historical value.
“His target,” Evelyn revealed, her gaze sweeping across the stunned faces, “was the basement switchboard. The one installed in 1888 and decommissioned in 1988.”
She presented acoustic analysis reports, generated from the recordings I had made. “That switchboard, ladies and gentlemen, spent thirty-six years recording and echoing every phone conversation made in the house. It was broadcasting his private crimes to the county dispatch for decades.”
The silence in the room was absolute. Julian’s frantic attempts to destroy the basement wall, his screams about Eleanor’s voice — it wasn’t about the money.
“Eleanor Hollister,” Evelyn continued, her voice gaining strength, “was never murdered. She willingly locked herself in the sub-basement vault in October 1988, attempting to prevent the family land from ever being commercialized. The very land Julian was trying to destroy.”
The switchboard, a conduit for generations of secrets, had become a supernatural recorder of his misdeeds, broadcasting them through a dead line. It wasn’t about the land value; it was about silencing the truth that echoed through the very foundations of his home. And the 1888 covenant, the historic document binding the estate to municipal oversight, had been Eleanor’s final, desperate attempt to protect it.
➡️ Read CHAPTER 19 to continue the story
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