Chapter 12 - THE INSURANCE POLICY
I thought Natalie had misunderstood.
She hadn’t.
Three years earlier, Teresa had tried to convince me to buy a large life insurance policy.
I remembered it now.
“You have a dangerous job,” she’d said.
Construction sites.
Heavy equipment.
Accidents happen.
It had sounded reasonable.
What I didn’t know was that Teresa had tried to persuade the insurance agent to list herself as beneficiary.
The agent refused without my authorization.
Natalie had a recording from the argument afterward.
We sat in Rachel’s office and listened.
Teresa’s voice came through the speaker.
“If something happens to Connor, Amy gets everything.”
Natalie answered, “She’s his wife.”
“That girl didn’t build him.”
“Mom—”
“I built him.”
I felt sick.
Then Teresa said:
“If Amy gets the money, she’ll disappear with that baby. I should control it.”
Rachel paused the recording.
“This establishes a pattern.”
“What kind?”
“Financial entitlement. Maybe more.”
Amy was pale.
“Did she want him dead?”
Rachel shook her head.
“Don’t jump there.”
I appreciated that.
Facts mattered.
Teresa was a thief.
A manipulator.
Cruel.
That didn’t automatically make her a murderer.
Then Natalie showed us text messages.
Teresa: Connor never thinks ahead.
Natalie: He has a will.
Teresa: Amy made him change it.
Natalie: How do you know?
Teresa: I saw it.
I stared at the screen.
My will was in my office.
Same locked office.
“How long has she been going through my files?”
No one answered.
That night, I emptied the filing cabinet.
Everything important went into a bank safe deposit box.
Then I found something taped beneath the bottom drawer.
A small tracking device.
I stared at it.
Amy backed away.
“What is that?”
I took a photo and called Harris.
He arrived forty minutes later.
“Don’t touch it.”
“Too late.”
He bagged it.
“Could be commercially available.”
“Can you trace it?”
“Maybe.”
“What was it tracking?”
“Possibly the cabinet. Possibly whether it moved.”
I stared at him.
“Why?”
“If someone expected you to relocate documents, they might want to know.”
The next morning, Harris called.
The device had been purchased online.
The account belonged to Mason.
But the delivery address wasn’t Mason’s house.
It was Daniel Cross’s office.
Then Harris gave me the part that made my skin crawl.
The tracking device had transmitted data for four months.
May you like
And the last signal wasn’t from my house.
It had pinged from the police evidence room.
