Chapter 10 - The Second Phone
The forged will escalated everything.
Detective Ortiz took possession of it the following morning.
Melissa Crane’s lawyer called before noon.
Apparently Melissa had decided cooperation was preferable to prison.
By three o’clock, she was giving a formal statement.
That statement led police to Richard Vale.
Richard’s attorney denied wrongdoing.
Predictably.
Then Richard disappeared.
Less predictably.
His apartment was empty.
His main phone had been disconnected.
His office had been cleaned out overnight.
Hawthorne Capital’s computers were gone.
But people who flee quickly leave mistakes.
Richard left one in Carly’s suitcase.
A second phone.
We found it because one officer inventorying retrieved property noticed Carly had listed one mobile device, but two were visible in body-camera footage during the collection.
Detective Ortiz obtained a warrant.
The second phone belonged to Richard.
Or at least it had.
Carly had been using it.
The device contained months of encrypted-message backups.
Much of it had been deleted.
Enough remained.
The relationship between Carly and Richard was not just financial.
They were lovers.
Andy discovered this in Detective Ortiz’s office.
I wished he hadn’t been there.
Some truths are necessary.
The way they arrive still matters.
Ortiz placed several printed messages on the table.
She warned him first.
“Some of these are personal.”
Andy looked at me.
Then nodded.
“I need to know.”
The messages began seven months earlier.
Carly complaining about Andy.
Richard flattering her.
Then discussions about money.
Then the house.
Then messages that removed any remaining ambiguity.
Once this is finished, we won’t need him.
Richard replied:
You need him until title clears.
Another.
His mother watches everything.
Then give her something else to watch.
Another.
You said you could control Andy.
I can. He folds every time I cry.
Andy stopped reading.
His face emptied.
I placed my hand over his.
He didn’t cry.
That concerned me more.
“There’s more,” Ortiz said.
Andy nodded.
The relationship became physical.
Hotel reservations matched the car-navigation history.
But betrayal was almost secondary by then.
What mattered was conspiracy.
Carly and Richard had planned to use Andy’s identity, credit and expected inheritance to raise money.
When that failed to provide enough, they targeted my property.
The forged deed would create ownership.
The fraudulent loan would generate cash.
The quick resale would create profit.
The false capacity narrative would discredit me if I objected.
And if Andy resisted?
Carly had planned for that too.
One message read:
If he becomes a problem I’ll say he hit me. He knows nobody will believe him over me.
Andy stood.
“Can we stop?”
Ortiz immediately gathered the pages.
“Yes.”
He walked outside.
I followed.
He stood beside the parking lot with both hands on his hips, breathing hard.
“I loved her.”
“I know.”
“She was sleeping with him while telling me I wasn’t doing enough for our marriage.”
“I know.”
“She made me apologize after she hit me.”
I said nothing.
“She told me I was weak.”
Silence.
“She was right.”
“No.”
He turned toward me.
“You don’t know what I let happen.”
“I know exactly what happened.”
“I stayed.”
“People stay for complicated reasons.”
“I lied for her.”
“You were afraid.”
“I let her into your house.”
“That was a mistake.”
He looked surprised.
I continued.
“You made mistakes, Andy. That is different from deserving abuse.”
He began crying.
“I don’t know who I am anymore.”
That was the sentence that scared me.
Not because I believed he would never recover.
Because Carly had damaged his relationship with himself.
I held his face the way I had when he was small.
“Then we find out.”
That afternoon Andy called Dr. Keller.
His old therapist.
He asked for an appointment.
I considered that one of the bravest things he had done all week.
Meanwhile, Ortiz uncovered something stranger on the second phone.
A photograph.
Taken inside my bedroom.
My safe open.
The forged will visible.
Timestamped six weeks earlier.
Carly had accessed the safe long before Friday night.
How?
I had never given her the code.
Then I remembered.
Three months earlier, I had broken my wrist gardening.
For two weeks, Andy helped retrieve things from the safe.
One afternoon Carly had stood in the bedroom while he entered the code.
She must have watched.
But another photograph disturbed me more.
It showed my medication drawer.
I took only blood-pressure medication and vitamins.
Yet in the photo, a prescription bottle sat beside them.
Not mine.
The label was blurry.
Ortiz enlarged it.
Lorazepam.
A sedative.
Prescribed to someone named Patricia Sloane.
The geriatric consultant.
I stared at the image.
“Why was her medication in my bedroom?”
No one answered.
Then Noah found a deleted message from Carly to Richard.
Only part could be recovered.
...small dose before appointment... confused enough...
Elaine’s face changed.
“No.”
Andy whispered, “What?”
She looked at me.
“Did Carly ever give you medication?”
“No.”
“Tea?”
“All the time.”
My stomach turned.
Two months earlier, I had experienced three strange afternoons.
Dizziness.
Sleepiness.
Difficulty concentrating.
I had blamed the heat.
Once I had fallen asleep for four hours after drinking tea Carly made.
When I woke, she had laughed and said retirement was making me lazy.
The room tilted.
Not from medication this time.
From realization.
Carly may not merely have been inventing evidence that I was confused.
May you like
She may have been trying to create it.
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