Chapter 5 - The Man I Trusted
I had known Marcus Hale since I was eleven years old.
He came to Christmas dinners.
He attended my college graduation.
When Dad underwent surgery seven years earlier, Marcus sat beside me in the hospital waiting room for almost six hours.
After Dad died, he was the person who called me before sunrise.
Now police were telling me medication prescribed in Marcus’s name had been found near my father’s bed.
“Elena,” he said again. “I can explain.”
Samuel moved between us.
“Start.”
Marcus stared at him.
“That prescription was mine.”
My chest tightened.
“So the police are right.”
“Yes.”
“Why did my father have it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Digoxin can kill someone.”
“I know.”
“You never thought to mention you had a prescription for the exact drug found in my father’s blood?”
“I stopped taking it more than a year ago.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Marcus rubbed both hands over his face.
“I have atrial fibrillation. My cardiologist prescribed digoxin eighteen months ago. I had side effects. We switched medications.”
“What happened to the pills?”
“I threw them away.”
Samuel’s expression sharpened.
“Where?”
“At home.”
“That convenient.”
Marcus turned on him.
“You think I killed Victor?”
“I think a dead man had your medication in his body.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No,” I said quietly. “But it’s enough to make me wonder.”
The hurt on Marcus’s face was immediate.
I hated that part of me cared.
But Dad was dead.
I had spent too much of my life assuming people I loved could never truly hurt me.
Damian had cured me of that.
My phone was still connected to Detective Brooks.
She told us to remain where we were.
Twenty-eight minutes later, she arrived with another detective.
Marcus cooperated.
He gave them permission to search his home and office.
He handed over pharmacy records.
He even gave them the name of his cardiologist.
“What else do you want?” he asked.
Brooks studied him.
“Who knew about the prescription?”
“My staff.”
“Victor?”
“Yes.”
“Damian?”
“Possibly.”
“Vanessa?”
Marcus hesitated.
“Yes.”
I looked at him.
“How?”
“She picked medication up for me once.”
My stomach dropped.
“When?”
“Last year. I had outpatient surgery. Victor came to check on me. Vanessa drove him.”
Detective Brooks wrote something down.
“She went into the pharmacy?”
“Yes.”
“Did she enter your home?”
“Yes.”
That mattered.
Brooks clearly thought so too.
“What happened to the unused pills?”
“I put them in a bathroom cabinet until I could dispose of them.”
“And you’re sure you threw them away?”
Marcus went still.
“I thought I did.”
“You thought?”
“I remember collecting old medication into a bag. I don’t specifically remember that bottle.”
Brooks closed her notebook.
“We’ll verify everything.”
Before leaving, she asked to take my mother’s letter.
I refused to surrender the original but allowed Marcus’s office copier to make a duplicate.
After the detectives left, nobody spoke for a long time.
Finally Samuel said, “There’s another problem.”
I almost laughed.
“Of course there is.”
He pointed toward the empty filing cabinets.
“Whoever removed the Northbridge records knew Victor was dead before I did.”
“How?”
“I checked this office the morning after his death. The cabinets were still full.”
I looked at him sharply.
“You said you hadn’t been inside since Dad died.”
“I said I hadn’t been inside since his death. I came the next morning.”
“Then when were the files taken?”
“Between that morning and now.”
“Who has keys?”
“Victor. Me.”
“And?”
Samuel hesitated.
“One spare.”
“Who?”
“Your mother had it.”
“My mother is dead.”
“I know.”
“So where is her key?”
“I don’t know.”
Marcus walked toward the door.
“Maybe someone copied Samuel’s.”
“No. Security camera outside.”
“There’s a camera?”
Samuel pointed toward the repair garage next door.
“The owner installed one after several break-ins.”
We crossed into the garage.
The camera system stored thirty days.
Dad had died forty-two days earlier, but the Northbridge documents could have vanished more recently.
The garage owner, Pete, let us review footage.
For almost two hours, we watched nothing happen.
Cars.
Delivery trucks.
Rain.
Pedestrians.
Then Samuel suddenly leaned forward.
“Stop.”
The footage was dated twelve days earlier.
2:43 a.m.
A black SUV pulled into the alley.
Someone stepped out.
Woman.
Baseball cap.
Dark jacket.
She approached Northbridge’s rear entrance and opened it without forcing the lock.
Twenty-three minutes later, she returned carrying two file boxes.
The camera never got a clear view of her face.
But when she opened the SUV, the interior light came on.
Something silver flashed on her wrist.
I leaned closer.
A bracelet.
Thin chain.
Circular charm.
My mother’s bracelet.
Dad had given it to me when I turned eighteen.
I wore it through college.
Until it disappeared from my apartment six years ago.
I had accused myself of losing it.
But only one person had stayed in my apartment the weekend it vanished.
Vanessa.
“She stole my bracelet.”
Marcus nodded slowly.
“She may have stolen more than that.”
We watched the woman load four boxes.
Then she drove away.
Pete enlarged one frame.
The license plate was blurry, but not completely.
Marcus read the first four characters.
Samuel cursed.
“What?”
“That SUV belongs to Hawthorne Development.”
For the first time, we had direct evidence connecting Vanessa to Grant Hawthorne.
Maybe.
The woman’s face was still hidden.
We needed more.
Detective Brooks called before sunset.
Marcus put the phone on speaker.
“We searched Mr. Hale’s residence,” she said.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“The original prescription bottle is gone.”
Marcus looked sick.
Brooks continued.
“But his pharmacy confirmed the prescription and his doctor confirmed it was discontinued. That part of his story checks out.”
“Does that clear him?”
“No.”
Marcus nodded as though he expected that.
“There’s something else,” Brooks said.
“We examined the bottle recovered from Victor Moretti’s bedroom.”
I waited.
“We found two usable fingerprints.”
“Whose?”
“One belongs to Victor.”
My heart pounded.
“And the second?”
“It does not belong to Marcus Hale.”
I looked at Marcus.
His shoulders dropped.
“Vanessa?” I asked.
“No.”
“Damian?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Brooks paused.
“We don’t know.”
“The print isn’t in the system?”
“It is.”
I frowned.
“You just said you don’t know.”
“I said we don’t know why this person touched the bottle.”
“Who is it?”
The detective took a slow breath.
“The fingerprint belongs to a woman named Rebecca Cole.”
I had never heard the name.
Neither had Marcus.
But Samuel went completely white.
I turned toward him.
“You know her.”
Samuel gripped the edge of the desk.
“Elena…”
“Who is Rebecca Cole?”
He looked as if he had aged ten years in ten seconds.
“Rebecca Cole was the nurse who signed your mother’s death certificate.”
A chill ran through me.
“That was thirty-two years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Where is she now?”
Samuel looked at Detective Brooks’s phone on the table.
“She disappeared three days after your mother died.”
May you like
And suddenly my father’s poisoning was no longer connected only to the last six weeks.
Someone had been carrying my family’s secrets for more than three decades.
