CHAPTER 9 – THE DEAD WOMAN
Aunt Linda wasn't dead.
She was living under another name in Michigan.
When police contacted her, she didn't run.
She drove directly to the station.
I hadn't seen her since I was nineteen.
She looked older.
Thinner.
But it was Linda.
“Why did Dad tell us you were dead?”
“He didn't.”
She looked at me.
“Your mother did.”
Another lie.
Linda explained everything.
Eight years earlier, she had discovered Mom stealing money from Dad's company.
She confronted her.
Mom accused Linda of harassment.
Then convinced Dad that Linda was unstable.
Eventually Linda left.
Mom told Daniel and me that she had died overseas.
“Why didn't you contact us?”
“I tried.”
She looked ashamed.
“Letters came back.”
She pulled several envelopes from her bag.
All addressed to me.
All unopened.
RETURN TO SENDER.
I recognized Mom's handwriting on the labels.
Daniel studied Linda.
“You knew about pills?”
Linda's face changed.
“Some.”
She had been helping Dad secretly during his final months.
Dad suspected Mom was tampering with his medication.
But he didn't know Marcus's role.
Not until the week before his death.
“Why didn't Dad go to police?”
“He wanted proof.”
Linda looked down.
“And he thought Evelyn would never hurt him in front of Daniel.”
Daniel's hands tightened.
“She did.”
Linda began crying.
“I know.”
Then she told us why she had visited the storage unit.
Dad had instructed her to retrieve one item if Daniel was ever placed under guardianship proceedings.
“What item?”
“A video.”
My heart stopped.
“What video?”
Linda opened her purse.
Empty.
“It was gone.”
Someone had reached the unit before her.
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
But Ortiz did.
She checked the facility's older access logs.
One code had been used six months earlier.
Marcus.
He had found the storage unit.
Which meant he had Dad's final video.
And Marcus was currently sitting in county jail.
We thought that made the evidence safe.
We were wrong.
At 3:20 the next morning, Detective Ortiz called.
Marcus Vane had been attacked in his cell.
He was alive.
Barely.
May you like
And before losing consciousness, he had written two words in blood on the floor.
EVELYN KNOWS.
