Chapter 6 - The Second Signature
They found Rachel forty minutes later.
Alive.
Terrified.
Hiding inside the employee restroom of a feed store three miles from the gas station.
Jason was gone.
He had spotted the patrol cars and turned around before reaching her.
By sunset, the sheriff’s department had issued a statewide alert for his truck.
I should have gone home.
Instead, I sat in Detective Alvarez’s office with my parents, Daniel, and Rachel.
She looked nothing like the woman who had walked into the church that morning.
Her makeup was streaked.
Her hair hung flat around her face.
The expensive black dress suddenly looked ridiculous.
She wouldn’t look at me.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I stared at her.
“For what part?”
“Emily.”
“For sleeping with my sister’s husband? Helping him hide money? Sitting in Lily’s seat at her funeral?”
Rachel flinched.
“All of it.”
“That doesn’t bring her back.”
“No.”
Her eyes filled.
“It doesn’t.”
Alvarez set a recorder on the table.
“Start from the beginning.”
Rachel talked for almost two hours.
She met Jason at work.
He said his marriage had been over for years.
He said Lily refused to sign divorce papers because she was pregnant and wanted to punish him.
He said the investment money belonged to both of them.
Rachel created Red Cedar Consulting because Jason claimed he needed a temporary business account while restructuring his company.
“Did you know the funds came from Lily’s inheritance?” Daniel asked.
“Not at first.”
“When did you learn?”
“July.”
“And you kept the money?”
Rachel looked down.
“Jason said he would put it back.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Of course he did.”
Then Alvarez produced a plastic evidence bag.
Inside were papers recovered from a roadside ditch.
A deputy had found them less than a mile from where Jason’s truck had last been seen.
Daniel put on gloves.
The first page was a property transfer.
The second was a business authorization.
The third was a revised beneficiary form.
All carried Lily’s signature.
Daniel studied them.
“They’re forged.”
“How can you know that?” Alvarez asked.
“Because I prepared Lily’s estate documents. And because the signature on this page is the exact reason she hired me.”
He pulled out his phone.
A moment later he showed us two documents.
The signatures looked similar.
But not identical.
“Jason needed Lily’s authorization to move certain jointly held assets,” Daniel said. “She refused.”
Dad leaned forward.
“So he forged it.”
“It appears so.”
Rachel covered her face.
“I typed some of those forms.”
The room went still.
I stared at her.
“You what?”
“I didn’t sign them.”
“But you made them.”
“He told me Lily agreed.”
I stood so fast the chair hit the wall.
“You helped him.”
“I didn’t know he was going to hurt her!”
“You helped him take from her.”
“I know!”
Alvarez stepped between us.
“Emily.”
I backed away.
Rachel cried silently.
Then she reached into her purse.
“There’s something else.”
Alvarez immediately said, “Slowly.”
Rachel removed a small flash drive.
Jason’s initials were written across it.
J.R.
“I copied this two days after Lily died.”
“From where?”
“Jason’s laptop.”
“Why?”
Rachel looked at me.
“Because after he came to my apartment that night, I stopped believing anything he said.”
Alvarez placed the drive into an evidence pouch.
“What’s on it?”
“I don’t know everything.”
She wiped her face.
“But there’s an audio file.”
My mouth went dry.
“What audio?”
Rachel swallowed.
“Jason talking to someone about Lily.”
“When?”
“Four days before she died.”
“What did he say?”
Rachel looked directly at me for the first time.
“He said if she wouldn’t sign the papers…”
May you like
Her voice broke.
“…he’d make sure she never signed anything again.”
