Chapter 8: What Ray Chu Found
Ray Chu called back at noon.
He was brief, careful with his words, and by the end of the call my father had gone very still in the way that meant the information was worse than expected.
He hung up and sat down at the kitchen table.
"Michael Reeves has done this before," he said.
Vanessa had come back from talking to her sister.
She was sitting across from Dad.
I was standing near the counter.
"What do you mean?" she said.
"Ray pulled his full background.
Three years ago, a woman in her seventies hired him to manage her late husband's estate.
He found a prior version of the deceased's will — one that left a larger share to a charity than the final version did.
He told the woman that if the charity ever found out about the earlier draft, they could contest the settled estate." Dad paused.
"She paid him sixty thousand dollars to make the prior document disappear."
"That's extortion," I said.
"She never reported it," Dad said.
"She was frightened and she paid and she wanted it to go away.
Ray only found it because the woman's daughter mentioned it to a probate attorney two years later, but by then the statute of limitations on a civil action had run out and the woman herself had passed." He looked at Vanessa.
"You weren't the first person he did this to."
Vanessa's face had gone the color of old paper.
"He told me he was protecting me," she said.
"He was running the same play he'd run before," Dad said.
"Find a second marriage.
Find an anxious spouse.
Find an old document.
Create a threat.
Collect the money."
"But I came to him," she said.
"I reached out to him.
He didn't approach me."
"He didn't have to," Dad said.
"He knew you well enough to know what you were worried about.
He just waited for you to come to the right conclusion on your own."
She pressed both hands flat on the table.
"I feel sick," she said.
"Ray wants to meet with you this afternoon," Dad said.
"At his office.
He's going to need your full account of every interaction with Michael going back to when you first discussed this with him.
Every date you can recall.
Every location.
He's issuing a subpoena for Michael's financial records today."
"The bank employee," I said.
"Did he find anything?"
"Not yet.
But the transfer records show a payment from the household account to a shell company.
The shell company traces back to a law office in Michael's building.
Ray says it's textbook." Dad looked at his coffee.
"It was never going to be hard to find.
Michael didn't think anyone would look."
"Because I wasn't supposed to look," Vanessa said quietly.
Nobody argued with that.
She kept her hands flat on the table.
Steadying herself against something.
"I need to ask you something," she said to Dad.
"And I need you to answer honestly."
"All right," he said.
"Did you suspect me?" she said.
"Before last night.
Before the bank called.
Did any part of you already know something was wrong?"
He was quiet for a long moment.
"I noticed things," he said.
"The way conversations would end when I walked into a room.
The way you'd put your phone down too quickly sometimes.
I told myself it was nothing." He looked at her.
"I didn't want it to be something."
Vanessa nodded slowly.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"I know that's not enough."
"It isn't," he said.
"But it's a start."
She stood up and got her coat and her bag.
At the door she looked back at me.
"That first will," she said.
"Whatever your mother intended in it — she knew you.
She knew you'd take care of this family." She pulled the coat on.
"She was right."
She left for Ray Chu's office.
Dad and I sat in the kitchen.
He got up after a while and opened the refrigerator and stood looking at it the way you do when you're not actually hungry but you need something to do with your hands.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"I don't know yet," he said honestly.
"Ask me in a week."
He closed the refrigerator.
"Will you stay a few more days?" he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Of course."
He nodded.
He looked at the bear still sitting on the kitchen counter.
"Forty-two dollars," he said.
"You said you paid forty-two dollars for that camera."
"Yes."
He almost smiled.
It was the closest he'd gotten.
"Your mother would have found that very funny," he said.
I looked at the bear.
Its little red light had finally gone dark — the battery had run out sometime in the night after capturing everything it needed to.
"She would have," I said.
Dad put the kettle on.
And outside, Michael Reeves' phone was ringing with a call he didn't recognize, from a number registered to the financial crimes division of the federal district.
May you like
He let it go to voicemail.
He would not be letting the next one go.
