Chapter 3 - MICHAEL CRANE'S WARNING
The police wouldn't allow Daniel to leave immediately.
Detectives interviewed Sarah for nearly an hour inside a small conference room adjoining the ballroom.
She told them what she had heard.
She gave them the recording.
She explained her connection to Michael Crane.
But she did not tell them everything.
Not yet.
Detective Aaron Reed noticed.
“You're holding something back.”
Sarah met his eyes.
“I have documents.”
“What kind?”
“Michael's.”
“Where?”
“At my apartment.”
Reed closed his notebook.
“Then you're not going there alone.”
Daniel sat across the room with his jacket removed and his wedding tie hanging loose around his neck.
He looked like a man who had aged ten years since sunset.
“My wife just disappeared from our wedding after apparently trying to poison me.”
He paused.
“I want answers.”
Reed looked at him.
“You may not like them.”
Daniel gave a bitter laugh.
“I don't think we're still in the part of the evening where I get to like anything.”
An hour later, Sarah rode to her apartment with Daniel and two detectives.
When they reached the fourth floor, her front door was open.
Sarah froze.
“I locked it.”
Reed raised a hand.
Nobody moved.
The detectives entered first.
Sarah waited in the hallway with Daniel.
Minutes later, Reed returned.
“Someone searched the place.”
Sarah rushed inside.
Drawers had been emptied.
Books lay torn across the floor.
Her mattress had been pulled from the bed.
Daniel followed her into the bedroom.
“What were they looking for?”
Sarah dropped to her knees beside the heating vent.
She removed two screws from the metal cover.
Behind it sat a slim fireproof document pouch.
Still there.
Sarah exhaled.
Daniel watched silently as she opened it.
Inside were photographs, bank statements, medical records, and a small digital recorder.
On top lay Michael's handwritten letter.
Sarah handed it to Daniel.
He read the first line.
If Vanessa tells them my heart failed, she killed me.
Daniel sat down.
The blood disappeared from his face again.
Sarah handed him another page.
Michael had written about strange dizziness.
Missing medication.
Money transfers he hadn't authorized.
He had written that Vanessa repeatedly pressured him to change his life-insurance beneficiary.
He had refused.
Three weeks later, he was dead.
Daniel looked up.
“How did she get the money?”
“She didn't.”
Sarah's answer surprised him.
“Michael changed his beneficiary before he died.”
“To whom?”
“A charitable foundation.”
Daniel looked confused.
Sarah continued.
“Vanessa received almost nothing.”
“Then why wasn't she investigated?”
“She played the grieving widow perfectly.”
Sarah removed a photograph.
It showed Michael's office after his death.
“Because the evidence disappeared.”
Daniel studied the picture.
“What evidence?”
“His computer.”
Sarah pointed toward an empty space beneath the desk.
“And the person who removed it was never identified.”
Detective Reed entered.
“We may have identified him now.”
He held up his phone.
Security footage from the hotel showed the missing bartender entering an employee stairwell.
Reed enlarged the image.
Sarah stopped breathing.
She recognized him.
Daniel noticed.
“Who is that?”
Sarah looked at the man's face.
“Vanessa's brother.”
Daniel stared at her.
“She told me she didn't have a brother.”
May you like
Sarah nodded slowly.
“That was the first lie she told Michael too.”
