Chapter 6: The Paper Trail
I spent the next forty-eight hours reconstructing the financial damage.
With my father’s written consent and the temporary protective order in place, I gained access to the accounts Priscilla had been circling for months. The pattern was methodical. Small transfers at first—five hundred here, a thousand there—always labeled as “household help” or “medical expenses.” Then larger withdrawals. A cashier’s check for twelve thousand dollars made payable to a company that, after two phone calls, turned out to be a shell owned by one of Priscilla’s cousins. An attempt to change the beneficiary on a modest life-insurance policy. A forged signature on a request to add her name to the deed of my father’s house that the county recorder’s office had rejected for insufficient notarization.
I printed everything and organized it in the same careful way I used to prepare case files.
When I showed the summary to my father in the hospital that evening, he stared at the numbers for a long time.
“I knew she was pushing,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know she’d already started taking.”
“She didn’t get everything she wanted,” I told him. “That’s why she brought the bat.”
He closed his eyes.
I sat with him until he fell asleep, then stepped into the hallway and called the detective handling the local case. We scheduled a formal interview for the next morning. I also forwarded the financial packet to my contact in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Elder financial exploitation crossing certain thresholds could be charged federally. I wanted every option open.
May you like
Priscilla and Derek had treated my father like an obstacle.
I was going to treat them like subjects of an investigation.
