Chapter 3 - THE CALL FROM JAIL
I walked into the hospital hallway before I answered her.
“How do you know about the ring?”
Silence.
Then Victoria said, “Because your father showed it to my mother.”
The fluorescent lights seemed to sharpen around me.
“You knew my father?”
“No. Not really.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“Edward, I was seventeen. I saw him twice.”
“You saw him twice, but somehow he wrote me a warning about you?”
Her breathing changed.
So did mine.
A nurse pushed a cart past me. The wheels squeaked on one side.
Victoria said, “Ask Florence about Elise’s blue ledger.”
“What?”
“Ask her why she burned it.”
I looked through the glass panel in my mother’s door.
Florence was lying still, eyes closed.
“You tried to force a dying woman to sign away her home.”
“I know what I did.”
“You know?” I laughed once. It sounded awful. “That’s what you have?”
“No. I have an explanation. It is not an excuse.”
That stopped me.
Victoria had always been good at turning a sentence until it favored her. This one did not.
She continued. “Someone told me your mother was about to destroy the last proof that belonged to my mother.”
“Who?”
“I can’t tell you on this line.”
“Then we’re done.”
“Edward, wait.”
I nearly hung up.
Then she said a name.
“Martin Kessler.”
I froze.
Kessler had been my father’s attorney for thirty-one years.
He had handled our estate plan.
He had sat in the front row at Dad’s funeral.
He had sent flowers to my mother that morning.
Victoria whispered, “He told me the trust was built with money stolen from Elise.”
“That’s insane.”
“Maybe. I believed him.”
“You believed him enough to put my mother on the floor?”
Her voice broke. “I didn’t push her.”
“You were standing over her with papers.”
“I know.”
For the first time, she sounded less like my wife and more like a stranger who had borrowed her voice.
The call timer announced sixty seconds remaining.
Victoria rushed her words.
“Go to the bank. Box 214. Do not call Kessler. And whatever you find—do not leave it with the bank.”
“How do you know the box number?”
The line crackled.
“Because my mother put something in it.”
The call ended.
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