Chapter 7 - The Signature That Wasn’t Mine
Nine hundred thousand dollars can make people do terrible things.
Apparently, it can also make dead women open bank accounts and hospitalized women withdraw money.
I examined the documents.
The signature looked almost perfect.
Almost.
But whoever forged it didn't know something.
I had changed the way I signed the B in Bennett three years earlier after injuring my wrist.
The forged signature used my old style.
Someone had copied an old document.
Reyes traced the withdrawal.
The money had gone through three shell companies.
The final company belonged to a lawyer.
Martin Vale.
My mother's estate attorney.
The man who had read her will.
The man who had told me Vivian was contesting the house.
The man who had repeatedly advised me to settle.
Vale was arrested leaving his office.
He immediately blamed Vivian.
Vivian blamed him.
For once, both were partially telling the truth.
Vale had helped Vivian manipulate Mom's finances.
But after the crash, he'd decided to steal from both sides.
He forged my signature and planned to disappear.
Instead, investigators recovered most of the money.
More importantly, they found Mom's original will in his private safe.
The version he'd presented after her death was false.
The real will contained a handwritten letter.
Mom had left everything to me.
But there was one additional provision.
If Thomas Bennett was found alive, he was to receive half ownership of the house.
I looked at Dad.
He shook his head.
“No.”
“Dad—”
It was the first time I'd called him that.
We both froze.
His eyes filled.
I tried again.
“Dad.”
He covered his mouth.
“I don't want the house.”
“Mom wanted you to have part of it.”
“I want you.”
That sentence repaired something twenty-six years had broken.
I cried.
So did he.
And for a while, the investigation disappeared.
There was only a father and daughter finally allowed to grieve the woman who had spent her life trying to protect them.
But Vivian's trial was approaching.
And her attorneys had a strategy.
They planned to blame Eddie entirely.
Vivian would claim she hired him only to investigate Mom.
Eddie acted alone.
The threats were misunderstandings.
The money was unrelated.
It was absurd.
But criminal trials didn't run on what felt obvious.
They ran on proof.
Then Reyes called me.
“We found the tool.”
The tool used to cut the brake line.
Recovered from Eddie's storage unit.
It carried Eddie's fingerprints.
And beneath them, partially preserved—
Vivian's.
For the first time, investigators could physically connect her to the weapon used against the car.
But there was more.
Microscopic fibers caught in the tool case matched cashmere fibers.
Camel-colored cashmere.
My mother's coat.
Vivian had carried the tool while wearing the very coat she'd later stolen from her dead sister.
The prosecutor called it devastating.
Vivian's attorneys called it contamination.
The jury would decide.
The night before trial, I sat in Mom's bedroom.
Her coat was now evidence.
The closet looked empty without it.
Thomas stood in the doorway.
“Nervous?”
“Yes.”
“So am I.”
“What if they don't believe us?”
He looked at me.
“Then we keep telling the truth.”
Simple.
Mom would have said the same thing.
The next morning, I entered the courthouse.
Reporters crowded the steps.
Vivian's case had become national news.
The wealthy aunt.
The dead sister.
The disabled niece.
The missing husband.
The sabotaged brakes.
Everyone wanted a monster.
But monsters rarely looked like monsters.
Sometimes they brought lilies to your hospital room.
Sometimes they buttered toast across from you.
Sometimes they wore your mother's coat.
Vivian entered the courtroom.
Our eyes met.
She smiled.
Then her lawyer stood and announced that the defense had a surprise witness.
A woman entered.
I recognized her immediately.
And my stomach dropped.
She had been my mother's closest friend for thirty years.
She looked directly at the jury.
Then she said:
May you like
“Elena told me Claire wanted her dead.”
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