Chapter 3 - The Blue Case
Detective Nora Bennett arrived at the hospital wearing a dark jacket and carrying a notebook.
She didn’t promise me that everything would be fine.
I liked her immediately.
“Start with what you saw,” she said. “Then tell me what you suspect. Keep those separate.”
So I did.
The kitchen.
The bottle.
The video.
The message about the blue pill case.
Then the last three months.
Celeste changing my father’s routines.
His unexplained exhaustion.
The employees who had disappeared from our house.
My account access getting cut off.
Bennett wrote without interrupting.
When I finished, she asked, “Where’s the pill case now?”
“Probably in his bedroom.”
“Who has access?”
“Celeste. The staff. Me.”
“Don’t go looking for it yourself.”
“I know how evidence works.”
She met my eyes.
“You know how corporate evidence works. This is your father.”
That landed harder than I wanted it to.
A doctor came out of the treatment area.
My father was stable.
They were monitoring an abnormal heart rhythm and running additional tests, including for possible toxic exposure.
“We can’t tell you the cause yet,” he said.
“Could this have been happening over time?”
“It’s possible. It’s too early to say.”
I thanked him.
Then I went into the bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and shook so hard I couldn’t open a bottle of water.
Seven years as a fraud attorney had taught me to recognize lies.
None of it had prepared me for watching my father stop answering me.
When I came out, Maria was waiting near the vending machines.
Her uniform was wrinkled.
There was dried frosting on her sleeve.
“I should have told you sooner,” she said.
“You did tell me.”
“Not everything.”
I sat beside her.
She twisted a tissue between her fingers.
Two weeks earlier, she had found the blue pill case beside the kitchen sink.
Celeste was rinsing it.
“When I asked if Mr. Ashford had changed medicine, she told me to mind my work.”
“Did you see what was inside?”
Maria shook her head.
“Then yesterday, she said I’d be fired after the wedding.”
I took her hand.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
She looked at me with terrible exhaustion.
“Miss Evelyn, I think she already made sure of that.”
Maria opened her bag and handed me an envelope.
Inside was a dismissal letter.
May you like
Under my father’s printed name was a signature.
Mine.
