Rebecca caught me before I reached the truck. Her hand closed around my forearm with enough force to stop me. “You do not know where she is,” she said. “And if someone is watching her, driving around blindly could lead them straight to wherever she goes next.” I wanted to tear free and run anyway. Every instinct screamed movement, action, something. Standing still felt like another version of the cowardice that had already cost me my marriage.
The officer took my phone and enlarged the photograph. Olivia sat inside a dark sedan, head lowered toward the screen in her hands. The image had been captured through another vehicle’s windshield. Reflections made the background hard to read, but Rebecca recognized part of a sign at the edge of the frame. “That’s outside the medical plaza on Camelback,” she said. “She met someone there this afternoon.”
“Who?”
Rebecca hesitated.
I nearly shouted. “Who did she meet?”
“An investigator.”
The officer asked for the investigator’s name and number. Rebecca supplied both. He made the call while another officer photographed the threatening message. I watched his expression change as the conversation continued.
“What?” I demanded when he hung up.
“The investigator left about forty minutes ago. Your wife left separately.”
“Where was she going?”
“He doesn’t know.”
Rebecca looked away.
I saw it. “You do.”
“She was supposed to stay somewhere secure tonight.”
“Supposed to?”
Rebecca’s jaw tightened. “Olivia stopped answering about ten minutes before you received that photograph.”
The floor seemed to tilt beneath me.
Carlos stepped closer but did not touch me. “What kind of secure place?”
Rebecca ignored him and began calling Olivia again. Straight to voicemail. She tried another number. Nothing.
The officer asked whether Olivia’s vehicle had tracking protection enabled. Rebecca said she had been advised to disable several location-sharing services weeks earlier. That should have reassured me. Instead it meant whoever had followed her was not relying on the same careless access I once would have dismissed as coincidence.
I stared at the photograph until one detail sharpened. Behind Olivia’s car, a red reflection cut across the lower corner of the image. Not just any red. A narrow diagonal stripe over black.
“I’ve seen that.”
Rebecca looked at me.
“The reflection. I know that stripe.”
She took the phone.
I thought through every vehicle that had passed through the shop, every customer car, every familiar parking lot. Then it came back to me: a black pickup with a red vinyl slash down the rear quarter panel. It had sat outside my mother’s house two Sundays earlier.
I had noticed because it blocked half her driveway.
“Mom knows him.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know his name. But that truck was at her house.”
The officer immediately asked for Marjorie’s address and vehicle information. I gave both.
Rebecca’s eyes stayed on me. “Did you ever ask who the truck belonged to?”
“No.”
“Of course not.”
The words cut, but I let them.
An officer radioed the description. Another began checking traffic-camera access. I stood uselessly beside my own desk while trained people turned fear into procedure.
Then Rebecca’s phone rang.
She answered. “Olivia?”
Not Olivia.
Rebecca listened, then covered the microphone. “It’s the front desk at the apartment building she was using temporarily.”
My pulse accelerated.
Rebecca’s expression hardened.
“What happened?” I asked.
She held up one finger and listened another few seconds.
Then she ended the call.
“Her car is there.”
Relief came too quickly.
“And?”
“She isn’t.”
The room went quiet.
“Maybe she left with someone,” Carlos said.
Rebecca shook her head. “She was supposed to check in.”
I reached for my keys again.
This time the officer did not stop me. “We’re going there too.”
The drive became a blur of lights and lanes. I followed the cruiser while Rebecca rode with me because she knew the address. Neither of us spoke for several minutes.
Finally I said, “Do you think my mother would hurt her?”
Rebecca looked out the passenger window.
“That’s not the right question anymore.”
“What is?”
“Whether Marjorie can control the people she involved.”
I swallowed.
“You think she can’t?”
“I think financial crimes become dangerous when money, forged documents, and frightened accomplices collide.”
The temporary apartment was in a gated complex near the medical corridor. Olivia’s sedan sat beneath a covered space. The driver’s door was locked. Nothing appeared broken.
An officer swept a flashlight through the windows.
Her purse was gone.
So was her phone.
Rebecca entered the building with police. I followed after being told not to touch anything.
The apartment was small and nearly empty. A suitcase lay open on the bed. Clothes had been folded inside but not finished. A ceramic mug sat beside the sink. On the counter was a printed map with several addresses circled.
Marjorie’s house.
My auto shop.
The county recorder’s office.
And a storage facility on the west side.
I pointed at the last one.
“What’s that?”
Rebecca went still.
“You know?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“Your father rented a unit there.”
I stared at her.
“My father?”
She nodded.
“He kept it after moving out of a warehouse he used for work. After he died, Marjorie claimed she emptied it.”
“Claimed?”
“Olivia found evidence the payments continued.”
My throat tightened.
“For eight years?”
“Not consistently. Different cards were used.”
The officer asked Rebecca how Olivia discovered that.
“Bank records connected to Marjorie.”
I looked at the map again. “Was Olivia going there tonight?”
Rebecca pointed toward a handwritten time beside the address.
7:30.
It was already past eight.
We left immediately.
The storage facility occupied a long strip of concrete buildings surrounded by chain-link fencing. A manager met police at the gate.
Unit 214 was still active.
Registered under my father’s name.
That alone turned my stomach.
“My father is dead.”
The manager frowned at his computer. “Account’s current.”
“Who pays it?”
He looked at the officer before answering. “Automatic payment.”
“With whose card?”
The officer requested formal cooperation. The manager stopped volunteering details.
We drove inside.
Unit 214 sat near the far corner under a broken exterior light.
The roll-up door was closed.
Olivia’s car was not there.
But tire marks crossed the dusty concrete.
Fresh ones.
Police opened the unit after obtaining the manager’s authorization under emergency circumstances.
The metal door rattled upward.
A smell of paper, dust, and old wood drifted out.
At first I saw nothing remarkable. Boxes. An old chair. Two metal filing cabinets. My father’s tool chest.
Then Rebecca shined her flashlight deeper.
A folding table stood against the back wall.
On it sat stacks of documents.
And photographs.
Dozens of them.
Some were of me.
Some of Olivia.
Some of my father.
I stepped closer.
One photograph showed my father standing beside a man I had never seen.
Another showed the same man with Marjorie.
Years younger, but unmistakably her.
The officer asked me if I recognized him.
“No.”
Rebecca did.
Her face lost color.
“Who?” I asked.
She picked up the photograph carefully by its edges.
“This is the man from the apartment recordings.”
My pulse stumbled.
“He knew my father?”
“Apparently.”
I looked at the date printed on the back.
Nine years earlier.
A full year before my father died.
That meant the stranger working with Marjorie had not entered our lives recently.
He had been there long before Olivia ever started watching.
A noise sounded outside.
Metal striking concrete.
Every officer turned.
Someone ran between the storage rows.
Police moved instantly.
I started after them until Rebecca grabbed me.
“Stay here.”
“I’m not staying—”
“Derek.”
Then I saw something on the folding table that stopped me.
Olivia’s phone.
The screen was cracked.
A thin smear of blood crossed one corner.
I picked it up before anyone could stop me.
The display lit.
One unsent message filled the screen.
It was addressed to me.
Derek, if you find this, don’t trust the story about your father’s heart attack. He knew what Marjorie was doing before he died.
Below it was another unfinished line.
And she knows you saw him that night.
I stared at the words.
Saw who?
Then the memory came back.
Rain.
My father shouting in the garage.
My mother telling me to go upstairs.
And another man standing near the workbench.
The same face staring up at me from the photograph in my hand.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: A Forgotten Night From My Father’s Death Returned in Fragments, and Every Memory Pointed Toward the Man Olivia Feared
My Mother’s Furious Phone Call Forced Me to Notice the Question I Had Spent Three Years Refusing to Ask
Part 5 of 47
