“To check on them.”
“Then why didn’t you call emergency services when you smelled gas?”
“I didn’t smell anything.”
“You just said your wife told you about it.”
He looked at me.
The tenderness vanished.
“You trapped me.”
I met his stare.
“No.
I listened.”
He shoved the folder closed and stood, but Detective Ortiz blocked the path to the door.
Two uniformed officers entered from the corridor.
They had been waiting beyond the nurses’ station while Ortiz gathered enough to confront him safely.
My father raised both hands.
“This is insane.
My wife is dead.
My daughter is confused.
You’re turning grief into a crime.”
Ortiz took the folder from the bed.
“Then you won’t mind explaining the forged signature.”
“It isn’t forged.”
“The document is dated after her death.”
“That’s an administrative error.”
“And the power of attorney?”
“She asked me to prepare it.”
“Before or after you increased the fire coverage on the house?”
He said nothing.
That question was new to me.
Ortiz watched him absorb it.
Investigators had found that the policy on our home had been increased less than six weeks before the fire.
A separate policy on my mother’s life had also been amended.
My father was the primary beneficiary.
I was listed second.
The changes alone did not prove murder.
But they gave the fire a price.
My father tried to leave.
One officer stopped him and asked him to remain while they executed a warrant on his car and office.
He turned toward me before they led him from the room.
“You have no idea what your mother did,” he said.
It was meant to wound me.
Instead, it gave us another direction to investigate.
After he was gone, Ortiz sat in the chair he had occupied.
“You remembered more than you told me,” she said.
“Not the explosion.”
“The bank statement?”
I nodded.
“My mother asked whether money could vanish.”
Ortiz placed the folder on her lap.
“Can it?”
“No.
Not if we know where to look.”
The next morning, she brought me a secure laptop and copies of the financial records investigators had obtained with emergency authorization.
My hands were bandaged, so she turned pages and entered searches while I told her what to examine.
At first, the accounts looked ordinary.
Mortgage payments.
Utilities.
