Chapter 10 - The Last Day of Thomas Vance
Homicide investigators arrived before we played the next recording.
They asked me to leave the room.
I refused.
One of them began explaining trauma and evidentiary procedure.
I interrupted him.
"Detective, I spent thirty years telling families information they did not want to hear."
He stopped.
"I am staying."
Rachel sat beside me.
The technician started file twenty-five.
At first there was only breathing.
Then Thomas spoke.
"Greg, if this is recording, leave it running."
His voice sounded strained.
Greg asked, "Are you all right?"
"No."
"Do you need a doctor?"
"Probably."
"Then why are we sitting here?"
Thomas took a breath.
"Because I checked my medication."
Every muscle in my body tightened.
"And?"
"The tablets in my bottle are wrong."
Greg swore.
"Wrong how?"
"Different imprint."
"Call Eleanor."
"No."
My eyes filled with tears.
Even dead, Thomas was making me angry.
Greg said, "You have to tell her."
"I will."
"When?"
"After I know whether Daniel did this."
"You heard him yesterday."
"He said he changed my pills."
"What else could that mean?"
Thomas answered slowly.
"It could mean he replaced them with a different brand."
Greg laughed in disbelief.
"You cannot still be defending him."
"I am not defending him."
"Then what are you doing?"
"Making sure I do not accuse my son of trying to kill me unless I know he tried to kill me."
That was Thomas.
Precise to the point of pain.
Greg asked whether he had the bottle.
Thomas said yes.
"I put three tablets in an evidence envelope."
The detective paused the recording.
"Do you know where that envelope is?"
"No."
"Did police recover medication after his death?"
"The paramedics gave the bottles to me."
"Do you still have them?"
I thought back to the week after the funeral.
Vanessa had helped clear the bathroom cabinet.
She said seeing Thomas's medications would make grief worse.
She took a bag of bottles to the pharmacy disposal box.
At least that was what she told me.
"No."
The detective wrote something down.
We resumed the audio.
Greg said, "If Daniel changed them, he did it because Kessler told him to."
Thomas replied, "You do not know that."
"I know Kessler."
"Then tell me what you know."
Greg's voice dropped.
"He keeps leverage."
"On whom?"
"Everyone."
"Including Daniel?"
"Especially Daniel."
"What leverage?"
"The first guardianship sale."
Thomas asked him to explain.
Greg described Louise Brenner's case.
Daniel had not been involved initially.
Kessler represented the nephew seeking guardianship.
Greg arranged financing for the purchase.
The property sold cheaply to a shell buyer.
North Valley acquired it days later.
The profit was divided.
Then Kessler approached Greg with another case.
And another.
Daniel entered when North Valley needed more capital.
He borrowed money to expand.
Then the market turned.
Daniel could not repay the debt.
Kessler offered him a way to earn out of it.
Bring potential guardianship targets.
Identify valuable homes.
Use family conflict to start proceedings.
Daniel had introduced three families.
Then four more.
"And Eleanor?" Thomas asked.
Greg was silent.
"Was my wife one of Daniel's targets?"
"Not at first."
Those three words made my skin crawl.
Thomas's voice became deadly quiet.
"What does that mean?"
Greg sighed.
"Kessler asked Daniel about your house."
"When?"
"Months ago."
"And Daniel said what?"
"He said Eleanor would never agree to sell."
"Then?"
"Kessler asked what would happen if she could not make the decision."
Thomas did not speak for several seconds.
Then he asked, "Did Daniel answer him?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
Greg hesitated.
"He said you would have to be gone first."
I felt Rachel's hand close around mine.
The detective paused the recording again.
"Mrs. Vance, are you able to continue?"
I nodded.
"Play it."
Thomas asked Greg whether Daniel meant murder.
Greg said he did not know.
"He might have meant you would never permit a guardianship while alive."
Thomas answered, "That is what I want to believe."
Then he coughed hard.
Greg urged him again to go to a hospital.
Thomas said he would.
The recording ended.
File twenty-six began seven hours later.
Thomas was speaking alone.
His voice was weaker.
"El, I am sorry."
I pressed my lips together.
"I should have told you sooner."
He took a breath.
"Daniel is tangled in something ugly."
Another breath.
"I do not know whether he changed my medicine to hurt me or to scare me."
He coughed.
"Either way, I have made copies."
Then his voice changed.
He sounded frightened.
I had heard Thomas angry, exhausted, embarrassed, and grieving.
I had almost never heard him frightened.
"Someone is in the house."
The recording picked up a distant door.
Thomas whispered, "El is at the market."
Footsteps followed.
A voice called from another room.
"Dad?"
Daniel.
Thomas stopped the recording.
The timestamp was 1:18 p.m.
At 2:06 p.m., I returned from the grocery store and found Thomas collapsed beside his desk.
Daniel was not there.
He told me later he had been at work all afternoon.
I had believed him.
The detectives exchanged a look.
"We need his employment records," one said.
Rachel nodded.
Then the technician opened file twenty-seven.
It was only nine seconds long.
Thomas's voice was faint.
"Daniel, what did you give me?"
My son's voice answered.
"Dad, I swear, it was not supposed to do this."
A crash followed.
Then the recording ended.
I stood so abruptly my chair fell backward.
Rachel caught my arm.
I could not breathe.
For three months, Daniel had told people I was falling.
He had photographed my bruises.
He had called me confused.
He had tried to take my house.
And now I was listening to the possibility that he had also caused his father's death.
One detective asked permission to seek an exhumation order for Thomas.
The word exhumation struck me like a physical blow.
I stared at him.
"You want to dig up my husband."
"We want to determine what was in his body when he died."
I looked at the frozen waveform on the screen.
Thomas had spent his last days building a trail for me.
If I stopped now because the next answer hurt too much, everything he had done would become meaningless.
"Do it," I said.
The detective nodded.
Then Rachel's phone rang.
She answered, listened, and slowly looked at me.
"What?" I asked.
She covered the microphone.
"Daniel just filed an emergency motion."
"For what?"
Her eyes narrowed.
"He says you are fabricating evidence because grief has made you delusional."
I almost laughed.
Then she finished.
"And he attached a psychiatric evaluation."
"From whom?"
"A doctor you actually saw."
I went still.
There was only one psychiatrist I had seen after Thomas died.
May you like
Dr. Miriam Cole.
Vanessa's mother.
