Chapter 5 - The Woman at My Door
I didn’t open the door.
Patricia expected me to.
Instead, I spoke through the camera.
“What do you want?”
Her smile widened.
“To finish something your husband started.”
“You mean the blackmail?”
Her expression changed.
Only slightly.
But enough.
“I don’t know what Thomas told you.”
“He told me enough.”
Patricia lifted the folder.
“Not everything.”
Detective Hale was already on his way.
Patricia didn’t know that.
I kept her talking.
She claimed Thomas had ruined her life.
Claimed he had paid her because he was guilty.
Claimed Vanessa deserved part of the Whitmore fortune because our family had “lived well” while hers struggled.
Then she said something revealing.
“Vanessa was supposed to marry Daniel and fix this.”
Supposed to.
Not happened to.
Supposed to.
My stomach turned.
“You encouraged her to marry my son?”
Patricia smiled.
“You think wealthy families are the only ones allowed to plan?”
There it was.
Daniel’s marriage had begun as part of a scheme.
But schemes have a habit of becoming messy when real emotions enter them.
Patricia admitted Vanessa had eventually fallen in love with Daniel.
That made everything worse, not better.
Because she had loved him and still forged his signature.
Loved him and still used him.
Loved him and still prepared to have his mother declared incompetent.
Sirens sounded in the distance.
Patricia heard them.
Her smile vanished.
She ran.
Police caught her two blocks away.
The Bellhaven file was recovered.
Vanessa remained missing.
And when investigators searched Patricia’s car, they found something none of us expected.
A second phone.
On it were messages between Patricia and Vanessa.
The latest had been sent forty minutes earlier.
Mom, if Margaret won’t cooperate, use Daniel. He still doesn’t know about the beneficiary change.
Beneficiary change.
Rebecca immediately began checking every policy and account.
At 2:13 the next morning, she called me.
“Margaret, we found it.”
“What?”
“A life insurance policy.”
“Whose?”
She paused.
“Daniel’s.”
My heart began pounding.
The beneficiary had been changed eight months earlier.
From me and Vanessa jointly—
to Vanessa alone.
And the signature authorizing the change looked exactly like Daniel’s.
Except Daniel swore he had never signed it.
For the first time, this was no longer only about stealing property.
Someone had been making financial plans around my son’s death.
May you like
And Vanessa was still out there.
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