Chapter 5 - THE LEDGER
We called 911.
For the next forty minutes, I sat in Rachel’s parked car outside the hospital while police tried to locate Claire.
At 1:03 a.m., my phone rang from Claire’s number.
A detective answered.
They had found her car in a grocery-store lot in Evanston.
The driver’s window was broken.
Claire was gone.
My stomach turned.
“Was there blood?”
“A small amount.”
Rachel took the phone and gave the detective everything we knew.
At 2:10, an email arrived in my inbox from Claire.
Scheduled delivery.
Subject: IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO ME.
Attached was a spreadsheet with hundreds of transactions.
Rachel opened it on her laptop.
The numbers ran back four years.
Fake consulting invoices. Inflated renovation bills. Payments to shell vendors. Money moving from Michael’s company into Patricia’s holding company, then outward again.
“Tax fraud?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Rachel said. “Maybe embezzlement.”
Then she stopped scrolling.
One column was labeled E.H.
My initials.
There were seven transfers totaling $311,000.
Every one listed my inheritance account as the source.
“That’s impossible.”
I had barely touched the account since my father died.
Rachel clicked another tab.
Scanned authorizations appeared.
All carrying my signature.
All fake.
At the bottom was a note Claire had typed in red.
MICHAEL SAYS PATRICIA HAS ORIGINAL POWER OF ATTORNEY.
I laughed because the alternative was screaming.
“I never gave Patricia power of attorney.”
Rachel zoomed in on the document number.
Then her face changed.
“Emma… this POA was supposedly signed six years ago.”
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Six years ago, I had been unconscious in a hospital after losing a pregnancy.
And Patricia had been the only family member sitting beside my bed when Michael went home to shower.
