“All linked to accounts your sister shared with your parents for estate planning. She noticed money missing,” he said. “Small amounts at first. Two hundred here, five hundred there. But over four months it added up to thousands.”
“And my parents never saw it?”
“She said the transactions were labeled as routine household expenses. No one questioned it.”
“Except her,” I said.
“Except her,” he confirmed.
I looked closer. The timestamps on the transactions were always early morning, between five and six-thirty a.m. My sister didn’t make financial moves at dawn. She barely woke up before eight unless the IRS threatened to audit the entire nation.
Then another detail punched me harder.
The withdrawal locations.
Two miles from Mitchell’s house.
Every time.
Grant watched my expression.
“She confronted them?”
“No,” he said. “She was planning to, but then she started getting sick.”
I stiffened.
“Meaning?”
He slid over a note written on a small yellow Post-it.
Symptoms worse after meals at their house. Something is wrong, and I don’t know how to prove it yet. If anything happens to me, check the bank withdrawals.
The air felt thinner.
“You think they poisoned her?” I asked, the words sharper than I intended.
“I think she believed someone was,” Grant said. “And I think she was trying to collect evidence before she confronted them.”
I leaned back in the chair, my pulse thudding in my temples. I’d seen poisoning cases during deployment. Slow-drip poisons were common tactics when someone wanted plausible deniability.
But inside a family?
That was a new level of hell.
Grant hesitated before pushing a small white envelope toward me.
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