Kate remained silent, her hand clutching the letter in her pocket. Andy looked prosperous: well-fed, wearing an expensive jacket and a gold watch. He clearly hadn’t been struggling these past five years.
“I asked you a question. Do you understand?” he repeated, his grip tightening.
“I understand,” Kate answered quietly.
Andy let her go and headed for the door. “Good. Just keep your head down, don’t bother anyone, and you’ll be fine. But if you keep pushing this, you’ll regret it.”
The next day, the town turned on her completely. At the general store, the clerk refused to sell her a loaf of bread. “We don’t serve your kind here! You stole from sick kids, now you can starve.”
A group of men loitering outside shouted insults as she passed.
“Thief! You’ve got no conscience!”
Someone threw a rock, hitting her squarely between the shoulder blades. The pain was sharp and deep. Later, Mrs. Davis cried as she looked at the bruise. “You have to leave, dear. They’ll kill you here. They have the power, the money, and you’re all alone.”
But Kate wasn’t going to give up. Her father had given his life to uncover the truth. She couldn’t betray his memory. Somewhere, there had to be people who would listen. Somewhere, there had to be justice.
The text message arrived on Saturday morning, as Kate sat in the cold shed, wondering what to do next. It was from an unknown number, short and to the point: “I was the notary for your father’s will. He asked me to tell you: if anything happened to you, there are copies of the documents in another location. Meet me at the bus station at 3 PM. Don’t come alone.”
Kate read the message several times, hardly believing her eyes. Mrs. Davis agreed to go with her. The old woman was frightened, but she said, “Your father was a good man, always helped everyone. If someone is standing up for him, I’ll be there.”
At the bus station, a man in his sixties, wearing an old but clean overcoat, was waiting for them. He introduced himself as Simon, a notary public.
“Your father was my teacher in high school,” he said quietly. “A fine, honest man. When he came to me with that will, I knew something serious was going on. He was very agitated, kept saying his daughter was innocent and that she’d been framed.”
The notary pulled a folder and a flash drive from his briefcase. “Here are duplicates of all the documents. Your father asked me to make copies, just in case the originals disappeared.”
Simon explained that a week after Frank’s death, Tamara had come to his office. She’d offered him a thousand dollars in cash to destroy the will. When he refused, she started making threats, saying she had connections and would have his license revoked.
“But I wasn’t scared. Frank Peterson was like a father to me.”
The notary led them to a small rental apartment on the outskirts of town. Another man was waiting for them inside—he was in his fifties, with a tired face and sharp, observant eyes. He introduced himself as Mr. Cole, a private investigator.
“Retired detective,” he explained. “Your father found me through a friend and asked for my help.”
Cole turned on a laptop and played a video. On the screen was a homeless man in his forties, his hands trembling. He was holding a driver’s license and explaining how a woman in a headscarf had approached him at the bus station.
“She gave me fifty bucks, took me to a bank, and had me open an account in my name. Said some money would be deposited in a few days, and all I had to do was withdraw it and give it to her,” the man mumbled on the recording. “And that’s what I did. A quarter-million dollars came in. I took it all out, gave it to her. She gave me another fifty to keep my mouth shut.”
The detective showed him a photo of Tamara. The man nodded. “That’s her, for sure. I remember her. She had mean eyes but a sweet-sounding voice.”
“Your dad paid me with the last of his savings,” Cole said. “Nearly twenty thousand dollars. He said, ‘The money doesn’t matter, as long as my daughter is cleared. I’ll see this through, I promise.’”
The detective told them he’d found another witness—the neighbor, Susan. She had seen Tamara visiting Frank on the day he died, carrying a thermos.
“But she’s scared,” Cole explained. “She says Tamara has connections. Sheriff Brody is her nephew. The neighbor is afraid they’ll make her life miserable.”
The next day, Kate went to see Susan. The woman opened the door on a chain, saw Kate, and tried to shut it.
“Please, leave me alone! I’m scared of her, don’t you understand? She has power, she has money.”
“Susan, you were at my father’s funeral,” Kate said gently. “He was your teacher, remember? Are you really going to let his murderer walk free?”
The neighbor burst into tears and let her in. Her hands shook as she poured tea, constantly glancing out the window.
“I saw her that day,” Susan admitted. “She came over to Frank’s with a thermos, said she was bringing him some soup since he was sick. An hour later, the ambulance came. But I’m afraid to testify. They’ll ruin me, or worse. I’ll give a statement, but only if there’s an official investigation. I won’t just walk into the sheriff’s office.”
Through his old contacts, Detective Cole got a meeting with a prosecutor from the state’s Attorney General’s office. DA Miller was a man in his late forties with graying temples and weary eyes. For three hours, he meticulously reviewed the documents Kate brought: the bank statements, the witness accounts, the photographs.
“This is a complex case, but you’ve got some serious leads,” he said finally. “We’ll need an exhumation. Without it, we can’t prove poisoning. But if the lab finds a lethal dose of something in his system, I’ll open a homicide investigation.”
The prosecutor pushed a form across the desk.
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