Chapter 4: The Other Will
I drove to Teresa's house at eleven-thirty that night.
Reeves had told me not to.
He'd said it clearly, professionally, and twice.
He'd explained that once they had a warrant — which could take until morning — they would conduct the search properly and anything found would be admissible.
I'd nodded and thanked him.
Then I'd asked Amy to stay at the station with Frederick, gotten in my truck, and driven the four miles to the house where I grew up.
The lights were still on inside.
Someone had been there — relatives who'd scattered when the police arrived, probably coming back to collect things or compare stories.
I knocked.
No answer.
I used the spare key I'd had since I was nineteen.
The living room was a mess.
Coats over chairs, glasses left on the coffee table, the smell of the party still in the air.
I walked past all of it.
Teresa's bedroom was at the end of the hall.
Her filing cabinet — grey metal, two drawers, the kind she'd had since before I started school — was against the far wall.
The top drawer was unlocked.
I went through it carefully.
Electric bills.
Insurance papers.
A folder of birthday cards going back twenty years.
My school photos in a rubber-banded stack.
The bottom drawer was locked.
I stood there for a moment.
Then I went to her bedside table, opened it, and found the small brass key she'd kept there my entire life because she always forgot where she put things.
The bottom drawer held three folders.
The first was bank statements — not hers.
Mine.
Printed copies of my account activity going back eighteen months, with certain deposits circled in red pen.
The second was a series of wire transfer receipts.
The money I'd been sending her — three thousand dollars a month — had not been spent on groceries or Amy's household bills.
It had been transferred, in portions, to two accounts I didn't recognize.
The third folder held a document in a clear plastic sleeve.
I put on the reading light and looked at it.
It was typed on legal paper.
It had my father's name at the top.
It had a notary stamp at the bottom — Donna Marsh, the same name Reeves had mentioned.
And it had a signature that looked, at a glance, like my father's handwriting.
But my father had d*ed of a stroke.
His right hand had been affected for the last two years of his life.
His real signature, on the actual will I'd filed with the county, was smaller than it used to be.
Shaky.
The signature on this document was firm and even.
My father hadn't signed this.
He couldn't have.
I photographed every page with my phone.
Every bank statement.
Every transfer receipt.
Every page of the false will.
Then I put everything back exactly as I'd found it, relocked the drawer, returned the key to the bedside table, and walked out of the house.
I called Reeves from the driveway.
"I know where the document is," I said.
"And I know what else is in that drawer."
A pause.
"Mr.
Bradley, I told you—"
"I didn't touch anything.
I have photographs.
And you're going to want that warrant first thing in the morning."
Another pause.
Longer.
"Send me the photographs," he said.
"And go back to your wife."
I sat in the truck for a moment before starting the engine.
The house looked ordinary from the outside.
Porch light on.
Curtains drawn.
The kind of house that looked like nothing bad had ever happened inside it.
I thought about every holiday I'd spent in that living room.
Every Sunday dinner.
Every time Teresa had hugged me at the door and called me her good son.
I started the truck and drove back to Amy.
She was in the waiting area, Frederick asleep across her lap, her head leaning against the wall.
She opened her eyes when she heard my footsteps.
"Did you find it?"
"Yes."
She searched my face.
"How bad?"
I sat down beside her.
Frederick stirred but didn't wake.
"She's been moving the money I sent her into accounts I've never seen," I said.
"For over a year.
And she had a forged copy of my father's will made — one that leaves the house to her instead of me."
Amy was quiet for a long moment.
"Connor," she said finally.
"Your aunt Betsy.
She was at the party tonight.
She was laughing when they said I should be in the kitchen." She paused.
"Betsy witnessed your father's real will.
She was one of the two witnesses."
I looked at her.
"She knew," Amy said.
"She had to have known there was a real will.
Which means she knew the other one was false."
The waiting room hummed with its fluorescent lights.
"She's been part of this," I said.
Amy didn't answer.
May you like
She just looked at me with those tired, careful eyes.
And I realized the circle was wider than I'd thought.
