Chapter 5 - The Voice Memo
The phone smelled like coffee grounds and rainwater when Ortiz placed it in an evidence bag.
The screen was shattered. The case was bent. But the technician recovered the last audio file.
Daniel listened in a small interview room.
His mother's voice came first.
"Olivia, sit down."
Then his wife's.
"Don't talk to me like I'm a child."
"Then stop behaving like one. I found the transfers."
A chair scraped.
"You went through our account?"
"Daniel asked me to help with his father's trust taxes. Your name shouldn't be on three transfers from that account."
Daniel's throat closed.
His father had left a family trust after dying from a heart attack four years earlier. Daniel rarely touched it. Margaret handled the paperwork because she had spent thirty years as a bookkeeper.
Olivia said, "I was going to put it back."
Margaret answered, "Two hundred and twelve thousand dollars? When?"
Ortiz paused the audio. "Did you know?"
"No."
She resumed.
Olivia's voice dropped. "You don't understand what I was dealing with."
"Then tell your husband."
"He'll leave me."
"That's his decision."
"You always wanted him to."
"I wanted him to stop cleaning up messes he didn't know you were making."
Then Margaret said something Daniel would remember for the rest of his life.
"And I found the forged medical power of attorney."
The audio cut off.
Ortiz looked at Daniel. "Medical power of attorney?"
"I don't know."
"Someone may have created paperwork giving Olivia authority over your mother's medical decisions."
Daniel thought of Margaret lying unconscious.
He thought of Olivia crying beside her.
Then his phone buzzed with a hospital notification.
He opened it and felt the room tilt.
May you like
A request had been filed that morning to restrict Margaret's visitors and designate one person as her primary medical decision-maker.
Applicant: Olivia Mercer.
