Chương 4
She opened her email.
There it was.
Drafted, not sent.
A photograph she had taken at 8:15 a.m.
The second will.
Sophie leaned closer.
Rachel tilted the screen away.
“Sorry.”
“No. I just need to think.”
“Is that it?”
Rachel nodded.
Sophie’s face lost color.
“You really found another will.”
“I found something that looks like one.”
“What does it say?”
Rachel read the first page again.
She had already read it twice while hiding in Margaret’s study, but fear had blurred parts of it.
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THOMAS EDWARD HAYES.
Dated eighteen months before his death.
Later than the will Margaret had used in probate.
That much Rachel had confirmed.
The signatures looked real.
Two witnesses.
One of them was a name Rachel recognized.
Daniel Cho.
Thomas’s longtime accountant.
The other was a woman named Judith Bell.
Rachel did not know her.
She scrolled.
The major change was not the house.
Not the investments.
Not even the trust.
It was Hayes Residential Group.
Thomas’s construction company.
Under the probated will, Margaret inherited controlling interest.
Under this document, control was divided between Evan and Sophie, with a provision giving longtime employees a pathway to purchase twenty percent through an employee trust.
Margaret would receive income for life.
But not control.
There was another provision.
A strange one.
If any beneficiary deliberately concealed or destroyed the will, that beneficiary would forfeit certain discretionary assets.
Rachel had read that paragraph three times.
Thomas had expected trouble.
Sophie whispered, “Why would Grandma hide that?”
Rachel looked at her.
“Because the company is her life.”
“She doesn’t even go to the office anymore.”
“She calls the office every day.”
Sophie sat back.
“She says she’s checking on people.”
“She’s checking on control.”
A doctor came in before Sophie could answer.
Rachel had no fractures. No dangerous oxygen issues. Some muscle compression. Dehydration. Bruising. They wanted to keep her several hours.
The doctor asked whether she felt safe going home.
Rachel almost said yes automatically.
The word reached her throat and stopped.
Home meant the house she owned with Evan.
The bed they shared.
The bathroom fan he wanted to replace.
His running shoes by the garage door.
His coffee mug in the sink.
The man who had packed soil around her ribs because his mother told him Rachel had betrayed the family.
“No,” she said.
The doctor nodded as if that answer were ordinary.
Maybe it was.
Sophie said, “She can stay with me.”
Rachel looked at her.
“You have three roommates.”
“So?”
“You sleep on a futon.”
“I have a bedroom.”
“You told me your bedroom doesn’t have a door.”
“It has a curtain.”
Rachel stared.
Sophie shrugged.
“It’s a very good curtain.”
Rachel laughed.
Once.
Pain pulled at her ribs.
She pressed a hand against her side.
Sophie smiled faintly.
Neither of them said how strange it was to laugh.
By early afternoon, Evan had been arrested.
Rachel learned that from the detective, not Sophie.
Detective Marisol Vega was small, patient, and unimpressed by family mythology. She sat beside Rachel’s hospital bed with a notebook balanced on one knee and asked questions in an order that irritated Rachel because they were practical instead of dramatic.
Who dug the hole?
Did Rachel enter voluntarily?
Was she physically restrained?
Who placed the soil?
What did Evan say?
What did Margaret say?
Had anyone threatened Rachel before that morning?
Was there alcohol?
Weapons?
Medication?
Did Rachel fear death?
Rachel answered carefully.
When Vega asked about the shovel, Rachel looked away.
“He pushed it into the dirt beside my face.”
“How close?”
“Maybe three inches.”
“Did he swing it at you?”
“No.”
“Did he say he would hit you?”
“No.”
“Why did he do it?”
Rachel thought.
“To scare me.”
Vega nodded.
“Did it work?”
“Yes.”
That answer cost more than Rachel expected.
Vega waited.
Rachel rubbed her thumb against her fingertip again.
“I thought he might kill me.”
Sophie stopped moving in the chair.
Vega’s expression did not change.
“Did you believe Margaret wanted him to?”
Rachel considered that.
“No.”
Sophie looked surprised.
Rachel continued.
“I think Margaret wanted me frightened enough to tell her where the document was.”
“And Evan?”
“I don’t know what Evan wanted.”
The sentence hurt.
Vega wrote something.
“Tell me about the document.”
Rachel explained.
Not everything.
Not yet.
She described going to Margaret’s house that morning after receiving a call about Thomas’s old tax records.
Vega stopped her.
“Why did she call you?”
“She said she needed help finding paperwork.”
“Why you?”
“I’m an office manager at a physical therapy clinic. I organize things.”
Vega looked up.
Rachel understood the skepticism.
“That sounds stupid.”
“It sounds incomplete.”
Rachel almost smiled.
“Margaret asks people to do things so she can blame them for touching things later.”
“That’s a specific observation.”
“I’ve known her nine years.”
“So why go?”
Rachel looked at Sophie.
Sophie looked away.
Because Margaret had mentioned Daniel Cho.
Because Thomas’s accountant had called Rachel two days earlier.
Because he had asked whether anyone had contacted her about a sealed envelope Thomas left in his office.
Rachel had said no.
Daniel had gone quiet.
Then he said, Don’t ask Margaret about it until I call you back.
He never called back.
The next morning Margaret invited Rachel over to help sort tax files.
Rachel had gone because curiosity beat caution.
That was the truth.
Partly.
Another part was less admirable.
Rachel was angry.
For six months after Thomas died, Margaret had treated Rachel as though she were a visitor at family discussions. Estate meetings happened without her. Company questions stopped when she entered a room. Margaret once told a bank officer, while Rachel was standing beside her, that Rachel was “not financially involved with the family.”
Rachel had wanted to find something Margaret didn’t want her to know.
She had wanted leverage.
Not money.
Not exactly.
She wanted the private satisfaction of catching Margaret in a lie.
May you like
It was childish.
It also nearly got her killed.
