Chapter 2 - The Skeletons in the Safe
Detective Miller pulled a plastic evidence bag from her briefcase, carefully taking Grandma’s passbook from the manager’s hands. ""Miss Vance, when your maternal grandfather Henry Ward passed, he was the sole owner of Ward Machine Works, a manufacturing firm sold for nearly seven million dollars. Your mother, Claire, passed away giving birth to you. Henry anticipated that Gregory Vance might remarry and squander your mother's legacy, so he set up an ironclad trust solely for you, naming Beatrice—Gregory's own mother—as the independent custodian.""
The puzzle pieces snapped together with terrifying clarity. All my life, Gregory had treated me like an unwelcome charity case. When I wanted to attend state college, he sneered that girls like me were built for minimum-wage diner shifts, pocketing the meager few thousand dollars Beatrice had tried to give me for tuition. Meanwhile, he bought Pamela a brand-new Mercedes every two years and sent Dustin to expensive private boarding schools.
""My grandmother fought him alone,"" I whispered, the realization crushing my chest. ""He tormented her.""
""More than you know,"" Mr. Pendelton agreed. ""In our archive vaults, we have Beatrice's handwritten affidavits. For years, Gregory pressured her to surrender the master ledger. He defaulted on multiple real estate loans, used high-interest loan sharks to fund his failing logistics company, and tried to bully Beatrice into signing away the Ward inheritance to cover his personal debts. When Beatrice refused, he cut her off completely, leaving her to survive on a meager social security pension. She took in laundry and baked pies not because she had to, but to buy you clothes and school supplies without alerting Gregory to where the money came from.""
""He thought the account was tied to her social security,"" Detective Miller explained. ""He didn't realize that without this physical, authenticated passbook—which contained the original master decryption key from the late nineties—the bank's legacy security system would never release the funds. Gregory believed that if he could convince the court the book was lost or destroyed, he could petition a probate judge as her sole surviving son to claim her estate and bypass the red tape.""
""That’s why he threw it into the casket,"" I gasped, nausea washing over me. ""He didn’t just toss it in to humiliate her memory. He wanted everyone to see it buried. He wanted witnesses to testify that Grandma had discarded it or that it was buried with her, making it legally impossible to retrieve!""
""Exactly,"" Miller said. ""He wanted to file an emergency probate petition citing that the deceased had no liquid assets other than lost, unrecoverable ledgers, allowing him to petition for executor status over all Ward-related residuals. But because you retrieved this book, the fraud investigation is active. And there's more. Take a look at these wire attempts.""
Miller handed me a printout of the recent transactions. Just four days ago, while Grandma was slipping in and out of consciousness in the hospital, three wire requests of $1.5 million each had been sent to offshore holding accounts registered in Belize and Cyprus. The sender name on the transfer memos was 'Gregory Vance & Pamela Vance.'
""Are they trying to flee the country?"" I asked, my voice trembling with rage.
""Gregory's logistics company declared bankruptcy last month,"" Pendelton revealed. ""He owes millions to private creditors. Foreclosure notices were filed against his suburban mansion three weeks ago. He is completely drowning, Miss Vance. He was banking everything on liquidating this trust the moment your grandmother’s heart stopped beating.""
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""What do we do now?"" I asked, looking between the detective and the bank manager.
Detective Miller leaned in, her gaze steely and sharp. ""Right now, Gregory thinks the book is rotting under six feet of mud at Cedar Ridge. He has an appointment scheduled with a probate attorney this afternoon at three o'clock to swear under oath that no financial records exist. Miss Vance, if you're willing to cooperate with the District Attorney's office, we’re going to let Gregory walk right into his own trap.""
