Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN WITHOUT A GRAVE
The phrase sounded impossible.
A woman buried without a body belonged in one of my mother's dramatic charity speeches, not in a file connected to a financial investigation.
Yet Stephen Voss had written it twice.
Once in the letter to me, and once in a handwritten memo dated shortly before his death.
Rebecca insisted we separate rumor from evidence.
Nadia Brooks searched public records for unexplained funerals in 2018 connected to Bellweather Arts, Laurel House Advisory, and the Croft family.
Three days later she found a memorial service that had never been followed by a burial.
The deceased was listed as Elena Vale.
Graham's younger sister.
I remembered her.
Elena had worked briefly for my mother's foundation.
She was witty, impatient, and never seemed impressed by the rich people who wanted to be impressed.
At a Christmas dinner when I was twenty-five, she asked my father why the foundation spent more on its gala than on its scholarships.
He never invited her again.
According to the public obituary, she died overseas after a sudden illness.
But the death records were vague, and Nadia could not verify the claimed hospital admission.
Rebecca contacted an attorney with experience obtaining cross-border records.
The response came back with an unsettling absence.
There was no reliable evidence Elena had died.
“Then why hold a funeral?” I asked.
“That's what we need to learn,” Rebecca said.
My parents' public campaign against me intensified.
An aunt I hadn't heard from in seven years wrote that I had broken my mother's heart.
A former family friend left a voice message accusing me of trying to ruin a respected business.
One relative sent photographs from my childhood and asked whether I had forgotten how much my father loved me.
I remembered the photographs.
I also remembered what happened after the camera was put away.
The pressure was working in one way.
I was beginning to doubt my own right to feel safe.
Rebecca noticed.
“You are allowed to refuse contact while the facts are investigated.”
I nodded.
Then I asked the question I dreaded.
“What if the investigation fails?”
“We prepare for that possibility without deciding it's inevitable.”
That evening Miller visited with a development.
Owen Pike had changed his account.
Through his lawyer, he acknowledged helping Graham move an unconscious person into the SUV.
He claimed he thought he was assisting a medical emergency.
When he asked about an ambulance, he said Douglas told him one was waiting elsewhere.
He also said a woman had been in the vehicle when they drove toward Saint Paul.
“My mother?”
“No,” Miller replied.
“He identified Elena Vale from a photograph.”
I looked at her in disbelief.
“Elena is supposed to be dead.”
“I know.”
Miller leaned forward.
“Pike says she was alive and sitting in the back seat beside you.”
For the first time, I understood that the night of my assault might have involved someone trying to save me as well as people determined to silence me.
But if Elena was alive, she had disappeared again.
Before leaving, Miller gave Rebecca an image recovered from a toll camera near the Saint Paul route.
The SUV had stopped at a fuel station at 9:06.
A blurry figure stepped from the rear door.
She wore a blue scarf with a silver edge.
The camera captured only her profile.
I couldn't swear who she was.
But I knew why Miller had shown me.
My mother had worn that scarf earlier in the evening.
And if it was Beatrice at the fuel station, then Owen Pike had lied about who rode beside me.
The following morning, Rebecca received a handwritten postcard with no return address.
It contained one sentence.
I WAS THERE, AND YOUR MOTHER SAW ME.
It was signed with a single letter.
May you like
E.
