Chapter 9 - Twenty-Five Million
The life insurance policy changed the investigation.
Financial fraud was one thing.
A plan involving my death was another.
Naomi did not claim Connor intended to kill me.
Evidence had to establish that.
But her questions changed immediately.
Had I experienced unexplained accidents?
Medication problems?
Car issues?
Food poisoning?
At first, I said no.
Then I remembered the brakes.
Two months earlier, my SUV had rolled backward in our driveway even though I was certain I had left it in park.
Connor called it driver error.
The dealership found a damaged shift-lock component.
Three weeks later, I became violently sick after a dinner at Elaine’s house.
Nobody else did.
Brenda had prepared my plate.
Then there was the gas leak.
Our basement detector went off at three in the morning.
Connor claimed an old furnace valve had failed.
The technician said the valve looked unusually loose.
I had not connected any of those events.
Now I could not stop connecting them.
Naomi ordered investigators to examine everything.
Meanwhile, the missing drive revealed another payment.
$120,000.
Sent from Northstar Meridian to a consulting business linked to Raymond Hale.
The memo line contained two words.
FINAL PHASE.
My hands went numb.
Allison began crying again.
“I didn’t know.”
I turned toward her.
“You knew enough to sign a false medical statement.”
She covered her face.
“I thought Connor was protecting the company.”
“From me?”
“Yes.”
The answer hurt because it was honest.
She had believed her brother over me.
Not because she saw evidence.
Because he was family.
And I was only married into it.
That was the same loyalty Brenda had toasted in the restaurant.
Family loyalty.
The phrase suddenly sounded less like affection and more like a criminal code.
The next morning, authorities executed search warrants at two Apex offices and a storage unit linked to Raymond.
Inside the unit, they found surveillance equipment.
Photographs.
Copies of my daily schedule.
Pictures of my house.
Pictures of my father’s former attorney.
Pictures of Marcus.
And dozens of photographs of me.
At the grocery store.
At the gym.
At Dana’s apartment.
Walking to meetings.
Sitting alone in my car.
Someone had tracked me for months.
Then they found a folder labeled Behavioral Incidents.
Every supposed sign of my instability had been photographed.
Me arguing with Brenda.
Me crying outside the cemetery on my father’s birthday.
Me throwing a broken coffee mug into the trash.
Me shouting at Connor in our driveway after discovering he had lied about a business trip.
Ordinary human moments had been transformed into evidence.
Naomi showed me one final photograph.
It had been taken through the window of my home office.
I was asleep at my desk.
Beside my hand sat an open bottle of wine.
The image looked damning.
Except I remembered that night.
I had not been drinking wine.
I had taken cold medicine and fallen asleep while working.
“That bottle wasn’t there.”
Naomi looked at me.
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
The photo metadata showed it had been taken at 1:08 a.m.
I had gone to bed around midnight.
Someone had entered the office after I fell asleep.
Someone had staged the photograph.
Then Marcus found something inside Raymond’s storage records.
A receipt.
For a locksmith.
The date was six months earlier.
The address listed for the service was my house.
I had never hired a locksmith.
Connor had.
And according to the invoice, the job was not to replace a lock.
May you like
It was to create duplicate keys.
For every exterior door.
