Chapter 8 - MICHAEL'S MESSAGE
Michael finally contacted me.
Not by phone.
Email.
Subject:
DON'T LET EVELYN CONTROL THE STORY.
One line:
I did not know she would use peanuts.
Attached were twelve files.
I sat with Collins and Rachel in a hospital conference room.
Messages between Michael and Evelyn.
Evelyn:
We need a documented failure.
Michael:
Not a medical emergency.
Evelyn:
Michael:
Michael asking for legal options to remove me as trustee.
Fake reimbursement schedules.
Michael clearly participated.
A spreadsheet tracking money diverted from Lily's trust.
Evelyn.
Michael.
One hundred forty-two thousand dollars.
Three hundred eighty thousand.
Then a voice recording.
Michael:
"You said no one gets hurt."
Evelyn:
"Daniel needs to look negligent."
Michael:
"Then stage a missed appointment."
Evelyn:
"A missed appointment doesn't move three million dollars."
He objected to harming Lily.
Then continued helping the plan.
That did not make him innocent.
Evelyn's garage.
My jacket hanging from a chair.
Michael wrote beneath it:
She took the second injector after I left.
Collins said:
"If true, that helps separate his role from the peanut exposure."
"He still removed the first one."
"Looks like it."
"Which meant Lily had nothing."
"Yes."
Michael had created vulnerability.
Evelyn turned it into danger.
The email ended with an address.
Collins sent officers.
But Michael left a flash drive.
On it was a video confession.
"I stole from Lily."
"I signed the petition."
"I helped create the false trust amendment."
"I removed one EpiPen because Evelyn told me the luncheon needed to look like Daniel forgot his responsibilities."
"I thought Lily would eat safe food."
Rachel asked:
"Do you want to stop?"
"No."
Michael continued.
"Evelyn told me Anna's money came from Hart money that should have gone to my mother."
Anna's trust came from her maternal grandfather, unrelated to Margaret's inheritance.
But Michael believed it.
"Peter knows what happened to Margaret."
Collins looked at me.
"Peter told us he did not."
I stared at the paused image of Michael.
Evelyn had lied.
Michael had lied.
Now Peter had probably lied too.
Then Collins's phone rang.
Her face changed.
"What?"
She looked at me.
"Peter Vale was just found unconscious in the Hart Legacy archive."
May you like
Beside him was a burned file box.
Someone was still trying to erase 1996.
