Chapter 5 - The Man Carol Warned Me About
I couldn't stop staring at the note.
Do not trust him.
Eleven years.
Carol had written that name eleven years ago.
Gregory Bell had been dead to us for years.
Or so I thought.
Patricia arranged for a private investigator to locate him.
The answer came two hours later.
Gregory Bell was alive.
He still lived in Georgia.
And he had been working with Diana for nearly two years.
I felt a strange numbness spread through me.
“How does someone like that stay invisible?”
Patricia answered carefully.
“People aren't invisible. They're overlooked.”
The investigator's report contained a photograph.
Gray hair.
Thin face.
Silver glasses.
Standing beside the same dark blue sedan Harold had seen outside my house.
I looked at Marcus.
“You've met him.”
Marcus shook his head.
“Not in person.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Patricia noticed something.
“The dates.”
“What?”
“Bell's involvement begins roughly two months before Diana asked you to co-sign the loan.”
Marcus looked shocked.
“So she knew him before the loan.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Patricia pointed to another document.
“Because the loan may never have been intended to help the business.”
“What do you mean?”
She explained the flow of money.
The $22,000 was deposited into the business.
Within seventy-two hours, most of it was transferred elsewhere.
Then broken into smaller payments.
A consultant.
A property account.
An insurance service.
A personal account belonging to someone named Gregory Bell.
Marcus stared.
“I didn't know.”
“I believe you,” Patricia said.
I looked at him.
“Did Diana ever ask you to hide anything from me?”
He hesitated.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“She said you would overreact.”
“About what?”
“The house.”
My stomach tightened.
“What about the house?”
“She wanted to put some of her furniture upstairs.”
“That's it?”
Marcus looked ashamed.
“She wanted to redesign the rooms.”
“Why?”
“She said it would make the house feel more like ours.”
I stared at him.
“Ours?”
“I didn't mean it that way.”
“But she did.”
He nodded.
Patricia stepped between us.
“There's another issue.”
She placed a photograph on the table.
It showed my front door.
Taken from across the street.
Another showed my study window.
Another showed the driveway.
“When were these taken?”
“Recently.”
“Who took them?”
“We don't know.”
Marcus whispered, “Diana?”
“Maybe.”
I looked at the images again.
The photographs weren't amateur snapshots.
They were carefully framed.
Timed.
Documented.
Someone had been watching the house.
I asked, “Why?”
Patricia answered.
“To know who comes and goes.”
“Or to determine when you were vulnerable.”
The word struck me.
Vulnerable.
My stroke had made me vulnerable.
But the surveillance appeared to predate it.
That meant the plan hadn't begun because I became sick.
My stroke had simply created an opportunity.
That afternoon, I returned to my house with Patricia.
We searched everything.
Closets.
Cabinets.
Files.
Storage rooms.
I finally found something behind the attic insulation.
A cardboard box.
Inside were Carol's old financial records.
And one cassette tape.
I stared at it.
“Who still uses these?”
Patricia smiled faintly.
“Apparently your wife.”
I found an old tape player in the garage.
It still worked.
We listened.
Static.
Then Carol's voice.
Older.
Tired.
But unmistakably hers.
“If Robert ever listens to this…”
I closed my eyes.
“…then something went wrong.”
Marcus leaned against the wall.
Carol continued.
“I don't trust Gregory Bell.”
My breathing stopped.
“He helped me after my mother's estate was settled. At first he seemed kind. But he kept pushing me to move money into accounts I didn't understand.”
A pause.
“I refused.”
Another pause.
“I discovered he had been taking fees I never authorized.”
My hand tightened.
Then Carol said something that made the entire room go cold.
“He knows about Robert.”
I looked at Marcus.
The recording continued.
“He knows how Robert thinks. He knows Robert will give money to anyone he believes needs it. He said Robert's generosity is his greatest weakness.”
The tape clicked.
Static.
Then Carol's voice again.
“If anything happens to me, I want Robert to know something.”
She took a breath.
“The house isn't the only thing I protected.”
Patricia looked at me.
“What does that mean?”
We listened.
Carol whispered:
“There is money hidden where Robert would never think to look.”
Static.
Then silence.
The tape ended.
Marcus stared at me.
“What money?”
“I don't know.”
Patricia rewound it.
We listened again.
Nothing else.
Then the private investigator called.
Patricia answered.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
She listened.
“Are you certain?”
Another pause.
“Send me the photograph.”
She hung up.
“What happened?”
She turned the phone toward us.
The photograph showed Gregory Bell standing outside a building.
The building was in Savannah.
But it wasn't the commercial property Diana had purchased.
It was a bank.
The same bank where Carol's hidden account had been held.
Patricia whispered, “Bell visited the branch yesterday.”
Marcus looked at me.
“Why?”
Before I could answer, my phone rang.
The number was unknown.
I answered.
No one spoke.
Then a man's voice said:
“Robert Hale?”
“Yes.”
“You should stop digging.”
The line went dead.
My hands shook.
Patricia stood immediately.
“Did you recognize the voice?”
“No.”
Marcus stepped forward.
“Dad…”
I looked at him.
The fear in his eyes was different now.
Not fear of losing money.
Fear of realizing his own wife had been planning something he could no longer explain.
And then my phone buzzed again.
A text message.
One sentence.
Ask your son why he lied about the night Carol died.
I stared at Marcus.
May you like
He saw the message.
And for the first time since my stroke, my son looked terrified of me.
