Chapter 6 - The Account Nobody Mentioned
Daniel read the message three times. “What first account?” he asked, but Jake shook his head. He had never heard of it.
“Your father opened a separate investment account before he died,” she said. “It was supposed to be for you and Jake's college. He moved it into the family trust after the company merger.”
“It was supposed to be.” Rachel looked uneasy. “Vanessa helped organize the paperwork after the merger. She said the money had been rolled into a new fund.”
Daniel called his financial adviser, who confirmed that the account had been closed on paper but could not immediately locate the final transfer documents. He asked the adviser to preserve the records and send them to his attorney. The timing was unsettling: the account had been closed six months before Daniel married Vanessa.
Detective Grant called with the preliminary lab result that afternoon. The sample contained a prescription medication not prescribed to Daniel, but the lab could not yet say how much had been present or whether it would have caused serious harm. The investigator emphasized that the result supported concern, not a complete conclusion.
“That's one possibility,” Grant said. “But the video shows deliberate handling of the glass. We need to establish what the substance was, why it was there, and whether your wife intended to give it to you.”
When he ended the call, he found Jake in the doorway. The boy had heard enough to understand the stakes.
“Dad, she told me once that if you got sick, she could take care of everything.”
“After you came home late from the office. She was on the phone in the den. She thought I was asleep.”
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A quarterly review then surfaced the final transfer: much of the balance had gone to Northstar Advisory, a consulting company Vanessa had called routine. It had no listed staff or real office, and the approval appeared to come from a device Daniel didn't own.
Jake swallowed. “She said she just needed you to sign one more paper.”
