Chương 9
“Because he saw the word collateral and decided I was stealing the roof over his head.”
Claire looked at Daniel.
“Can we verify that?”
“Yes.”
Margaret gave him a tired look.
“You can verify every humiliating financial decision I made, Daniel. Enjoy yourself.”
He ignored the insult.
Dr. Levin said Arthur had left his office that day still angry but later called to apologize for involving him in a family dispute.
Two days later, Arthur called again.
He sounded calmer.
“He told me he had made arrangements,” Levin said.
“What arrangements?”
“He didn’t specify.”
Claire thought of the envelope.
The deed.
Daniel.
“Did he sound afraid?”
Levin considered it.
“He sounded relieved.”
That changed something.
On the drive home, no one spoke for fifteen minutes.
Then Daniel said, “I verified the loan documents.”
Claire looked at him in the mirror.
“When?”
“While we were in the parking lot.”
Margaret sighed.
“Of course you did.”
“They are secured by Margaret’s brokerage account. Not the house.”
Claire nodded.
One accusation removed.
Several remained.
At the mansion, they found a county investigator waiting.
Deputy Morales’s report had been forwarded to detectives because of the allegations involving medication and concealed records.
Detective Samuel Price introduced himself with the caution of a man who disliked being summoned into wealthy family mythology.
“I’m not here because I think anyone committed a homicide,” he said. “I’m here because there are enough questions that I’d rather not ignore them.”
Margaret asked for counsel.
Daniel said he represented Arthur’s estate interests, not Margaret.
She called another attorney.
Claire watched her do it and felt a flare of suspicion.
Then she hated herself for that too.
Of course Margaret called an attorney.
Claire would have.
Price interviewed Claire first.
He asked why she had not questioned Arthur’s death earlier.
Because there had been nothing to question.
He asked about family conflict.
Claire told him.
He asked about money.
She told him what she knew.
He asked whether Margaret benefited from Arthur’s death.
Claire said she assumed so.
Daniel later clarified that Margaret received substantial assets from separate trusts and investment accounts but not the mansion.
“She did not need the house to be financially secure,” he said.
Margaret, sitting with her newly arrived lawyer, said dryly, “How comforting to have my motive professionally reduced.”
Price asked whether Arthur’s body had been cremated.
Yes.
Claire felt the room shift.
No exhumation.
No toxicology.
No second chance.
The absence of evidence became permanent.
Price did not look surprised.
“Then this is going to depend heavily on records and testimony.”
Margaret’s attorney, Helen Ross, replied, “And I assume you will distinguish poor documentation from criminal conduct.”
“I distinguish things for a living.”
Over the next three weeks, Claire learned how investigation actually felt.
Mostly, it felt like waiting.
Detective Price requested hospice records.
Hospice’s legal department reviewed the request.
The physician who signed Arthur’s death certificate was contacted.
A nurse had moved to Arizona.
Another had left the agency.
Medication administration sheets existed, but pages were missing from the final week.
That fact initially terrified Claire.
Then hospice discovered scanned copies in an archived clinical system.
Nothing remained dramatic for long.
Every alarming gap eventually became either less alarming or differently alarming.
The scanned logs showed Arthur received doses within the prescribed range.
They also showed several entries made later than the time of administration.
Margaret’s initials appeared beside three of them.
One dose on the final morning had no volume documented.
Claire read that line until the numbers blurred.
She called Price.
He said, “It matters, but it isn’t proof of what happened.”
Everything mattered.
Nothing proved enough.
Claire continued working from the mansion.
Her supervisor stopped asking when she would return to Boston after Claire explained, in carefully limited terms, that there were estate complications.
Margaret stayed.
Claire did not evict her.
Not yet.
They developed a strange domestic truce.
Margaret used the upstairs suite.
Claire moved into her old bedroom, which had been redecorated twice since she left but still had a dent in the closet door from when she kicked it at sixteen.
They did not eat together every night.
Sometimes they did.
They spoke about Arthur only when necessary.
Then, slowly, necessity expanded.
One evening Claire found Margaret in the laundry room trying to repair a loose cabinet hinge.
“You have people for that,” Claire said.
“We used to.”
“What happened?”
“I let half the staff go.”
“Because of money?”
Margaret nodded.
Claire leaned against the doorframe.
“You could have told me.”
Margaret kept tightening the screw.
“Yes.”
“You really hate asking for help.”
Margaret looked at her.
“You inherited that from your father.”
“I’m not biologically related to you.”
“I am aware.”
Claire smiled.
Margaret returned to the hinge.
After a while Claire asked, “Did you love him at the end?”
Margaret stopped turning the screwdriver.
“What kind of question is that?”
“A bad one.”
“Yes.”
Claire waited.
Margaret closed the cabinet door, tested it, and opened it again.
“It moved around.”
“What does that mean?”
“Some days I loved him so much I thought it would kill me. Some days I hated the sound of him calling my name.”
Claire looked down.
Margaret continued.
“Then I hated myself for that. Then I hated him for making me hate myself.”
The cabinet stayed open.
“He could be cruel when he was frightened.”
“I know.”
“No,” Margaret said. “You knew the father version.”
Claire’s jaw tightened.
“And you knew the husband version.”
“Yes.”
“Neither of us knew all of him.”
Margaret looked at her.
“No.”
A week later, Detective Price called.
They had located the nurse who visited on Arthur’s final morning.
Her name was Tasha Greene.
She remembered the house.
She remembered Margaret.
She remembered Arthur asking her to leave.
Most importantly, she remembered preparing medication before leaving.
“What does that mean?” Claire asked.
May you like
Price spoke carefully.
“She drew the morphine dose into an oral syringe and left it labeled at bedside because Arthur had requested medication but then said he wanted to wait.”
