“Call the police.”
Dad was already dialing.
His hands shook so badly he nearly dropped the phone.
A woman answered.
Dad didn’t introduce himself.
“They found the red folder.”
The woman’s response came instantly.
“My deputies are already moving.”
I stared at him.
He put the call on speaker.
“Who is this?”
“Sheriff Mercer.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“Your father contacted me after his bank reported a suspicious financial request.”
A radio crackled behind her voice.
Then a deputy announced that two people were leaving Dad’s property in a silver SUV.
Sheriff Mercer ordered them stopped before they reached the highway.
I looked at Dad.
“You called the sheriff?”
“Yesterday.”
“And didn’t tell me?”
“I was trying to keep you out of it until I knew what it was.”
“That stopped being an option when Vanessa called to tell me you were dead.”
He looked older suddenly.
“I know.”
I sat across from him.
“What happened when Mom died?”
Dad looked toward the dark laptop.
“You heard Grant.”
“I heard him say they needed to destroy something.”
Dad rubbed his forehead.
“The story you know about that night isn’t completely true.”
I waited.
“You told me you were at Harold’s fishing cabin.”
“No.”
One word.
Three years of certainty vanished with it.
“Where were you?”
“At St. Matthew’s Hospital.”
“Why?”
“Harold called me. Chest pains.”
Dad stared at his hands.
“He said they’d been happening for days. I drove him to the emergency department and stayed there.”
I remembered Dad calling after two in the morning to tell me Mom was gone.
I remembered Vanessa filling in everything he couldn’t say.
Dad and Harold had been repairing storm damage at the cabin.
Mom had suffered a sudden cardiac event.
Vanessa had arrived shortly afterward.
She had called for help.
Nothing could have saved Mom.
Every piece had come from Vanessa.
“Why lie?”
“Harold asked me not to tell anyone about the hospital. He said he was embarrassed.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I know that now.”
Sheriff Mercer’s radio interrupted us.
The SUV had been stopped.
Vanessa and Grant were refusing to cooperate.
The sheriff asked whether the red folder was visible.
A deputy confirmed it was on the rear seat.
“Secure it.”
Grant began shouting.
Vanessa told him to shut up.
Then both started blaming each other.
A search of the vehicle produced jewelry, documents, cash, and several prescription bottles.
Dad leaned toward the phone.
“Whose prescriptions?”
The deputy read the label.
Eleanor Cole.
Dad gripped the table.
“That can’t be right.”
“Why?”
“Your mother’s medication disappeared after she died. Vanessa told me the paramedics took it.”
Sheriff Mercer became very quiet.
Then she told us to return home.
Eleven hours.
Dad barely spoke for the first five.
The landscape moved past in long strips of highway, gas stations, fields and towns whose names I forgot as soon as we crossed them.
Finally he said, “The paramedic told me something.”
I kept my eyes on the road.
“What?”
“He thought Eleanor had remained conscious for a while after she collapsed.”
“How long?”
“Possibly half an hour.”
I tightened both hands around the wheel.
“Vanessa told us Mom died almost immediately.”
“I know.”
“Did you ask why their stories were different?”
“I was burying my wife.”
His voice cracked.
“I believed my daughter.”
That silenced me.
We reached the sheriff’s office after dark.
Vanessa and Grant had been separated.
The red folder sat sealed in evidence plastic on a conference-room table.
Beside it were Mom’s prescriptions, jewelry, the old will draft, and paperwork connected to Dad’s finances.
Sheriff Mercer sat opposite us.
“The forged power of attorney is enough for us to keep investigating the financial crimes. What’s in this folder may be more serious.”
She opened it carefully.
The first item was a private investigator’s report dated six days before Mom died.
His name was Michael Turner.
Dad didn’t recognize it.
The report contained photographs.
Vanessa meeting someone near Dad’s bank.
Grant using Mom’s credit card.
Copies of checks.
Withdrawals.
Account records.
The total exceeded sixty-one thousand dollars.
Dad read the figures twice.
Then he whispered, “They were stealing from us.”
Near the bottom of one page was Mom’s handwriting.
I recognized the slant immediately.
She had discovered the missing money.
She intended to confront them that night.
The night she died.
Sheriff Mercer turned another page.
A letter.
This one was also from Mom.
Its meaning was simple.
If something happened to her, we were not to trust Vanessa’s account.
The folder was supposed to reach me.
I pressed my fingertips against my mouth.
“She knew.”
Dad stared at the paper.
“She knew she was in danger.”
“There’s something else.”
Sheriff Mercer removed a flash drive.
The date written on it was the date of Mom’s death.
We listened together.
At first there was only the low hum of a refrigerator.
Then Mom spoke.
“I know about the money.”
I hadn’t heard her voice in three years.
Dad folded inward beside me.
Vanessa answered.
She accused Mom of searching through her things.
Mom accused her of stealing.
Grant joined them.
The argument sharpened.
Mom said she had contacted a lawyer.
She said the evidence would go to me.
A chair scraped.
Vanessa complained that Mom always chose me.
Mom’s answer was quiet.
She chose the daughter who hadn’t stolen from her.
Then came a crash.
Mom gasped.
“What did you give me?”
Dad rose halfway from his chair.
The recording continued.
Mom’s breathing became labored.
Vanessa mentioned prescription bottles.
Grant told her to remove them.
Then Mom fell.
I closed my eyes.
Her voice came from the speaker, frightened and weak.
“Call an ambulance.”
Vanessa started crying.
She said they hadn’t meant for this to happen.
Grant wanted to know where the evidence was.
Mom refused to tell him.
He asked again.
She finally said I had it.
I opened my eyes.
“I don’t.”
Dad looked at me.
On the recording, Grant apparently said the same thing.
Mom insisted I would find it.
Then Vanessa asked whether she should call emergency services.
Grant said no.
Not yet.
Twenty-three minutes passed before anyone called.
Twenty-three minutes while my mother begged.
Twenty-three minutes while two people searched for evidence instead of helping her.
When the recording ended, nobody in the room spoke.
Dad bent forward and covered his face.
I stared at the black computer screen.
Mom had said I possessed the original.
I had no idea what she meant.
Then a memory surfaced.
A package.
One week before her death.
Small, square, heavier than expected.
Inside had been the blue music box from my childhood.
I had been busy.
I hadn’t opened it properly.
After the funeral I had shoved the entire package into the back of my bedroom closet because looking at anything from Mom hurt too much.
“It’s at my house.”
Dad looked up.
“What?”
“The music box.”
I reached for my phone.
Eleven hours away.
I considered calling my neighbor.
Before I could, a notification appeared.
Motion detected.
Back door.
I opened my security application.
A man stepped into my house.
He used a key.
He wore a dark coat and carried a bag.
Dad moved closer.
The man turned enough for the camera to catch his face.
Dad stopped breathing.
I recognized him too.
Harold Pike.
Dad’s closest friend.
The man whose supposed medical emergency had removed Dad from Mom’s house on the night she died.
Harold walked directly toward my bedroom.
Then he raised his phone.
“I’m inside,” he said.
He paused to listen.
“Tell Grant to stop panicking.”
Dad’s face went gray.
Harold continued toward my bedroom.
“I’ll destroy the original before Natalie gets back.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: Dad’s Closest Friend Broke Into My Bedroom for Mom’s Music Box, but What She Hid Inside Pointed Somewhere Else
My Sister Announced Our Father’s Death Before Sunrise, but the Man Eating Breakfast in My Kitchen Had Other Plans
Part 3 of 50
