Chapter 8 - The Safe-Deposit Box
The porch light was on when we arrived. Margaret hadn't left it on. Neither had I.
Richard's boots still sat beneath the hall bench. His raincoat still hung on the brass hook.
I stopped before the study.
Margaret placed her hand on my back. No words.
I entered. The green file box was gone. The bottom desk drawer, emptied. My deed, survey, tax records, insurance documents — gone.
But whoever had searched the room made one mistake.
Richard believed important papers belonged in two places. Originals at home. Copies somewhere inconvenient.
He'd kept copies in a safe-deposit box.
Vanessa had known about the house.
She had never known about the bank.
The next morning, Daniel and I sat across from his attorney, Helen Mercer. She reviewed everything without reacting — the power of attorney, the proposed deed, archived emails Vanessa apparently believed he'd never find, photographs, the facility deposit, the second mortgage.
Then the email that changed the room.
Eleven months of correspondence with the developer's acquisitions director. Not fourteen. Eleven — meaning she'd approached Richard three months before the company was even formally involved.
"She initiated contact," Helen said.
There was more.
Vanessa had described my health as rapidly declining. Claimed Daniel expected to assume financial responsibility for me. Suggested the property could be acquired below market value "before she becomes legally difficult."
The proposed purchase price was not $2.8 million.
It was $3.6 million.
She had removed eight hundred thousand from the number before ever saying it aloud.
"Where was the difference going?" Daniel asked.
Helen opened an attachment. A consulting agreement. VJW Holdings. Vanessa Jane Wilson.
Consulting fee upon successful acquisition: $800,000.
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For the first time since the kitchen, I laughed. Not because it was funny. Because greed, sometimes, is so precise it becomes absurd.
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