Chapter 5 - THE MONEY STARTED MOVING
The fifth day of my “five days to live” arrived, and I was still breathing.
Weakly. Painfully. But breathing.
That made Victoria reckless.
Daniel came to the hospital just after nine in the morning with a printed stack of bank records and a look I recognized from boardroom wars.
“She’s moving faster,” he said.
“Victoria?”
“Raymond mostly, but yes. Three shell companies. One real estate account in California. Two quiet liquidations of stock positions. And there’s something else.”
He placed a wire summary on my tray table.
A series of monthly payments had gone from one of Raymond’s private holding companies to an entity called Lakeview Medical Consulting.
Nora frowned. “That sounds fake.”
“It does,” Daniel said, “until you trace ownership.”
He slid over the next page.
Dr. Alan Whitmore’s brother-in-law.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
The doctor who told the nurse I had five days to live.
The doctor whose treatment notes had guided my care.
The doctor standing closest to my failing heart.
Nora’s jaw tightened. “Now we’re not talking about a greedy wife and a lover. We’re talking about conspiracy.”
“And motive,” Daniel said. “If Whitmore was being paid, he didn’t need to kill Jonathan outright. He just needed to make sure he kept declining.”
That afternoon, Victoria walked into my room carrying a sympathy-card face and stopped when she saw Daniel, Nora, and Dr. Shah all there at once.
“Am I interrupting?”
“No,” Nora said. “Actually, your timing’s excellent.”
Victoria glanced at me.
I let my face stay weak and unreadable.
Nora held up the seized pill box. “Lab results came back. Your capsule residue contains digoxin.”
Victoria’s color changed, but she recovered quickly.
“Jonathan takes digoxin.”
“Not in unprescribed doses,” Dr. Shah said.
Victoria folded her arms. “I don’t know anything about lab work. Maybe the pharmacy made a mistake.”
Nora tilted her head. “That capsule came from your purse.”
Victoria looked at me then. Not frightened. Calculating.
“You’re letting these people bully me while you’re lying in a hospital bed?”
The performance had slipped.
Daniel answered for me. “We’ve also frozen the estate transfers.”
Her eyes snapped to him.
“What transfers?”
He let the silence accuse her.
Then he added, “Raymond Crane is no longer authorized to move anything connected to Mercer Industrial Holdings.”
This time the fear was real.
Victoria turned toward me. “Jonathan, tell them this is ridiculous. Raymond handles ordinary financial operations. He’s done that for years.”
“Not Malibu homes,” I said quietly.
For the first time since we married, Victoria looked at me like she did not know me at all.
May you like
She left without kissing my forehead.
An hour later, Nora got authorization to search Raymond’s office.
