Chapter 8 - The People at the Door
Gabriel moved aside.
“Come in.”
He wanted to slam the door on the accusation.
Instead, he gave the investigators room to work.
Amelia stayed on the bottom stair.
One investigator, Ms. Lewis, crouched several feet away.
“Hi, Amelia. We’re here to make sure you’re okay.”
“Do I have to go?”
“We’re going to talk first.”
Gabriel called Lena, then answered questions.
His work travel.
His parents’ role.
What had happened Thursday.
He showed the school correspondence, the disputed payments, and the message from Marlene.
He didn’t pretend he had noticed sooner.
“I thought my parents were taking care of her,” he said.
Ms. Lewis wrote that down.
“And now?”
“Now I know I was wrong.”
They spoke with Amelia separately in the living room.
Gabriel waited in the kitchen, staring at the place where the tray had been.
When the interview ended, Amelia came straight to him.
“Was I supposed to say Grandma was nice?”
“No.”
“Because sometimes she was.”
“You can tell the whole truth. Good parts and bad parts.”
Ms. Lewis explained the next steps before leaving.
There would be follow-up conversations.
School records.
Other people to contact.
No dramatic rescue.
No instant declaration that everything was settled.
Just work that had to be done.
Gabriel could live with that.
Marlene couldn’t.
She called three times.
He let every call go to voicemail.
On the fourth, she left a message.
“I was concerned about that child before you decided to play father of the year.”
Lena saved it.
By afternoon, Rachel had spoken to the investigators.
So had Mrs. Collins.
Then Daniel called.
“I found something odd about the invoices.”
Gabriel opened his laptop.
“What?”
“They were created using a template from a bookkeeping service. The same person submitted the files each quarter.”
“Who?”
“An outside bookkeeper named Beth Sloane.”
“Does she know the services were fake?”
“I don’t know.”
Lena contacted Beth.
The response arrived that evening.
Beth said she had believed Harbor Home Support was legitimate.
She had retained the emails and source documents Marlene supplied.
She was willing to provide them through the appropriate process.
Attached to her initial reply was a sample.
A typed care summary.
Below it, Marlene’s instruction:
Make it sound more serious. The trust won’t pay for ordinary babysitting.
Gabriel read it twice.
May you like
Then he saw the next line.
Use the signature from last time.
