Chapter 2
I thought Evelyn was trying to scare me.
Then Detective Collins asked exactly the wrong question.
“Who created Lily’s trust?”
“My father.”
I answered immediately.
Robert Mitchell had died four years earlier after a short illness.
His will left Lily three million dollars in investments because she had been his only grandchild at the time.
Or so I believed.
Detective Collins frowned.
“The documents we recovered from Evelyn say otherwise.”
David stood beside Lily’s hospital bed.
“What do they say?”
Collins opened a folder.
“The original trust was established eleven years ago.”
I stared at him.
“That’s impossible. Lily is eight.”
“Exactly.”
He turned the document toward me.
The trust existed three years before Lily was born.
Its beneficiary was described only as:
FIRST BIOLOGICAL FEMALE DESCENDANT OF ROBERT MITCHELL.
My skin prickled.
“Why would Dad create that?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
I couldn’t.
My father had never mentioned it.
Then Collins showed me something worse.
Michael had filed a petition two months earlier claiming I was mismanaging Lily’s medical care.
“He was building a case before today,” Collins said.
David clenched his fists.
“My daughter has never missed an allergy appointment.”
“We know.”
“Then what did they have?”
“Photographs. Statements. Medical complaints.”
I looked through them.
Several photographs showed Lily eating at restaurants.
One captured her beside a dessert containing nuts.
Except I remembered that dinner.
The dessert belonged to another table.
Someone had framed the picture.
Another document claimed Lily had experienced three allergic reactions in six months.
She hadn’t.
The hospital records were forged.
I looked at Collins.
“Michael couldn’t have created fake hospital records himself.”
“No.”
He closed the folder.
“That’s why this is bigger than your brother and mother-in-law.”
David’s phone rang.
His sister, Natalie.
He ignored it.
She called again.
Then again.
Finally he answered.
“What?”
Her voice came through loudly.
“Mom was arrested?”
“Yes.”
“For poisoning Lily?”
David’s jaw tightened.
“Who told you?”
Silence.
“Natalie?”
“Michael called me yesterday.”
I stared at David.
“Yesterday?”
He put the call on speaker.
“What did Michael say?”
Natalie sounded frightened.
“He said there might be trouble at Mom’s luncheon.”
My stomach dropped.
“You knew?”
“No! He made it sound like some financial argument.”
“What else?”
“He asked if I still had Dad’s safe-deposit key.”
David froze.
Their father, Henry Walker, had died nine years earlier.
“What safe-deposit box?”
Natalie hesitated.
“The one Mom told us never to open.”
David looked at me.
Evelyn had spent years insisting Henry died with debts.
There was supposedly nothing left.
“What’s inside?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
Detective Collins immediately requested the bank information.
Before Natalie ended the call, she whispered one more thing.
“David, Mom once told me Lily’s trust belonged to our family before it belonged to Sarah’s.”
The room went silent.
I stared at my husband.
“That makes no sense.”
Then Lily stirred beneath the blanket.
“Mom?”
I went to her.
She looked sleepy.
“Grandma said Grandpa Robert stole the money.”
My heart stopped.
“When?”
“At Christmas.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She said it was a secret.”
Detective Collins stepped closer.
“What exactly did your grandmother say?”
Lily thought carefully.
“She said when Grandpa Robert died, he took something that belonged to Grandpa Henry.”
David slowly sat down.
His face had gone white.
Two dead grandfathers.
One three-million-dollar trust.
May you like
And suddenly Evelyn’s plan looked less like simple greed.
She believed she was taking something back.
