Chương 5
Rachel told Vega about Daniel’s call.
The detective wrote down the name.
“Do you have his number?”
“Yes.”
“Have you called him today?”
“No.”
“Don’t yet.”
Rachel nodded.
Then she explained finding the will.
Margaret’s study had once been Thomas’s.
After his death she replaced the dark wooden desk with a white one and removed his framed photographs, but she kept his filing cabinets because they were built into the wall.
Rachel had been looking for tax files when she found a key taped beneath the bottom drawer.
The silver key in the evidence pouch.
It opened a narrow cabinet she had never noticed.
Inside were old company agreements, letters, two blank checks from a closed account, and a legal envelope.
Rachel took out the will.
She photographed every page.
Then she heard Margaret speaking in the hallway.
Not to Rachel.
On the phone.
“She found the cabinet.”
Rachel froze.
Margaret’s footsteps stopped outside the study.
Rachel shoved the will under her blouse.
She did not know whether Margaret had seen her through the partially open door.
Then Evan’s voice sounded downstairs.
That was when Rachel climbed through the study’s side window onto the porch roof.
Vega stopped writing.
“You climbed out a second-floor window?”
“Yes.”
“In that blouse?”
Rachel looked down at the dusty cream fabric folded in a plastic belongings bag.
“Yes.”
Sophie muttered, “This family is insane.”
Vega glanced at her.
Sophie raised both hands.
“Sorry.”
Rachel explained the rest.
She climbed from the porch roof to the detached garage using an old trellis Thomas had built for climbing roses. She jumped the last four feet, bruising her ankle.
She hid the will inside the garage.
Where?
Vega asked.
Rachel did not answer immediately.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
Vega’s expression shifted slightly.
“For what?”
“I entered a locked cabinet with a key I found. I took a document. I took cash.”
“How much cash?”
“Eight hundred dollars.”
“Why?”
Rachel stared at the blanket.
“To make it look like I’d stolen something.”
Sophie frowned.
“What?”
Rachel continued before embarrassment stopped her.
“I knew Margaret had called Evan. I knew she would accuse me of theft. So I took the cash because if she was going to tell him I stole from her, I wanted something physical I could control.”
Vega’s pen stopped.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.”
“Why put it in a pouch?”
“I had evidence bags in my car.”
Vega raised an eyebrow.
“I help run a clinic. We use small specimen bags for patients who bring jewelry or personal items into certain procedures. I had a pack because I’d picked up supplies that morning.”
Sophie said, “That is the most Rachel explanation possible.”
Rachel ignored her.
“I put the cash and key together, sealed them, and hid them with an old phone in the backyard.”
“How did you get from Margaret’s house to your house?”
“Evan drove me.”
Vega leaned back.
“You voluntarily got in his car?”
“He said Mom thinks you took something. I said I’d explain at home.”
“You had the will?”
“No.”
“Where was it?”
Rachel hesitated again.
“In Margaret’s garage.”
“Where?”
“Inside an old paint can on the top shelf behind Thomas’s workbench.”
Sophie exhaled.
Vega watched Rachel.
“You left the original there.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because if Margaret searched my purse, car, clothes, or house, she wouldn’t find it.”
“You photographed it.”
“Yes.”
“And then at your own house, before you were buried, you had time to hide the old phone and pouch.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Rachel closed her eyes.
That part sounded worse each time she replayed it.
When Evan brought her home, Margaret was already in the backyard.
The hole waited behind the lilac bushes.
Rachel saw it through the kitchen window.
Evan told her to sit.
Margaret locked the back door.
Rachel said she needed the bathroom.
Evan followed her upstairs.
She slammed the bedroom door, went through the attached bathroom, climbed out onto the small roof over the kitchen, and dropped into the yard.
She could have run.
That was the part Rachel had not yet forgiven herself for.
She had her car keys.
The side gate was twenty feet away.
The neighbors were home.
She could have screamed.
Instead she ran to the shed, grabbed the old phone she used for gardening music, placed the cash and key beside it, and buried them near the hole.
She wanted a trap.
She wanted Margaret caught.
She wanted Evan forced to see.
She had spent years telling herself that if Evan ever witnessed his mother’s manipulation clearly enough, he would choose Rachel.
So she stayed.
She walked back toward the house.
Evan met her halfway.
He was furious.
Margaret said Rachel was trying to escape with stolen property.
Rachel refused to say where the will was.
Evan grabbed her arm.
The argument moved toward the hole.
And then, somehow, possibility became action.
He pushed her into it.
At first the hole came only to her hips.
She tried to climb out.
Margaret told Evan to stop her.
He shoveled soil in.
Rachel shouted once.
Not for help.
His name.
“Evan.”
He stopped.
She thought he had come back to himself.
Then Margaret said, “She will destroy everything your father built.”
Evan started again.
Rachel stopped talking.
That silence frightened him more than her shouting had.
She could see it.
Still he continued.
Vega was quiet for several seconds after Rachel finished.
“You could have left.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Rachel looked at the ceiling.
“I thought I could make him see her.”
“And did you?”
Rachel turned toward the detective.
“I don’t know.”
That evening Rachel left the hospital with Sophie.
She did not go to Sophie’s apartment.
One of Sophie’s roommates had texted to say her boyfriend was staying over, another had COVID, and the curtain on Sophie’s bedroom had apparently fallen down.
Sophie read the messages in the hospital parking lot.
May you like
“Okay,” she said. “My home is a biohazardous brothel.”
Rachel leaned against the passenger door.
