Chapter 4 - Unmasking the Beneficiary
The room at the Pine Crest Motel smelled of cheap bleach and old smoke. Two uniformed officers were stationed outside the door, their shadows stretching across the thin green curtains every time a car passed on the highway.
I couldn't sit. I paced between the twin beds, clutching a disposable paper cup of black coffee that tasted like battery acid. Every shadow looked like Graham; every creak of the floorboards sounded like the click of a gun.
Around 9:00 PM, Detective Vance knocked twice and entered. He looked exhausted, his tie loosened, rain still dampening his trench coat.
"How is Paige?" I demanded immediately.
Vance sighed and pulled out a chair, sinking into it. "She's alive, but in a medically induced coma. The paramedics administered hydroxocobalamin in time to bind the cyanide, but the neurological damage is undetermined. Judith broke during interrogation. She's spilling everything to save her own neck."
"What did she say?"
"Judith claims Graham owed six hundred thousand dollars to an offshore gambling syndicate in Macau. If he didn't pay by the end of this month, they threatened to dismember him. He convinced his mother that your death was the only way to save the family estate. He promised Judith half a million dollars to slip the powder into your glass while Paige distracted you."
"And Paige?" I asked, my heart breaking. "Was she in on it?"
"Judith swears Paige knew nothing," Vance said quietly. "Paige was just used as a decoy to make you feel comfortable and get you to drop your guard. Which makes Judith’s breakdown at the tavern authentic. She realized she’d killed her own child instead of you."
I buried my face in my hands. The betrayal was monstrous. Graham had turned his entire family into a slaughterhouse machine just to cover his reckless greed.
"There's something else," Vance continued, pulling out an evidence bag containing a small flash drive. "We executed a search warrant on Graham’s private office at BioPath. We found an encrypted laptop. Our cyber unit cracked the basic partitions."
"Did you find where he ran to?"
"Not yet. But we found email exchanges between Graham and a high-profile real estate developer named Donald Cross. Does that name mean anything to you?"
My breath hitched. "Donald Cross is my late father’s former business partner. He tried to buy out my family’s land on Blackwood Ridge five years ago, but my father refused. My father left that land entirely to me in his will."
May you like
Vance stared at me with razor-sharp intensity. "The three million dollar life insurance policy wasn't the main prize, Mrs. Calder. The land on Blackwood Ridge was just re-zoned for commercial lithium mining last week. It’s worth over forty million dollars. If you died without a will, the sole heir to that land under state marriage laws was Graham Calder."
---
