Chapter Eighteen #2
Esteban drew a shaky breath before looking Rafael and then Sierra in the eyes.
“A few months before I supposedly drowned, I was in Dad’s home office.
He was at a business meeting and had forgotten some document he needed.
So he called me and asked me to scan it on my phone.
” He shook his head. “It was a contract amendment that could have put millions at risk if he didn’t have it signed at that meeting.
Some kind of deadline penalty or something.
The potential monetary losses are the only reason he allowed me in his desk.
Heck, we’re not even allowed in his office normally unless he’s with us.
But he was desperate. He told me where the keys were hidden and told me to get the document from the top drawer. ”
He fisted his hands. “If he hadn’t been so adamant about only opening the top drawer, I never would have opened the others after scanning the document he wanted.
But he made me so danged curious about what he might be hiding in that stupid desk.
I searched the other drawers. That’s when I found out… the truth.”
Sierra tensed. “And what’s the truth?”
His pain-filled eyes stared at her from across the room. “Mom didn’t commit suicide because the cancer treatments weren’t going well. The treatments made her sick, sure, but her prognosis—in spite of what Dad later told us—was good. She didn’t kill herself. Dad murdered her.”
Sierra gasped in shock.
Beau reached for her hand, and this time he didn’t let go.
“You’re lying,” Rafael accused. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“I’m not lying. Why would I?”
“I don’t know. The same reason you’ve lied to us about being dead for a year.”
Esteban and Rafael began shouting at each other.
Sierra sank back against the couch and covered her face.
Beau stood. “Enough.” His deep voice cut through the noise. The brothers went silent.
“Fletcher?” Beau asked. “Anything I need to know about?”
“Not unless you want to learn more Spanish insults.”
“All right. Esteban, what did you find in the desk? Why do you think your father murdered your mother?”
“I don’t think, I know. In the bottom drawer was, well, I guess you’d call it a journal or a diary.
It was my mom’s. I never knew her to keep anything like that.
But the first dated entry was the day she had her biopsy.
So I guess she was writing down her thoughts and experiences to help her sort it out or something.
I don’t know. I felt guilty reading it, but it made me feel kind of…
closer to her, you know? Seeing what she went through, how she felt.
It wasn’t long, maybe fifty pages. I skimmed a lot of it.
I was more interested in how she felt at the end, before she…
left us. You guys remember that page, front and back, that was found by her body? Her suicide note?”
“It was so sad,” Sierra said. “So much talking about her pain and despair.”
“Well, lots of pages in her journal were like that. And a lot weren’t.
The days she was going through side effects from chemo were days she’d write that way.
Then she’d start feeling better and talk about her hopes for the future.
You get it, right? Dad’s the one who supposedly found her suicide note when he found her body.
And that supposed note was a torn page from her journal. It wasn’t a suicide note at all.”
Rafael snorted. “That’s your evidence that our father killed our mother? A torn page from her journal? She probably tore it out herself and thought it would be a good way to let us know how she was feeling when she ended things.”
“That would make sense,” Esteban said, “if she’d been depressed and ready to end it.
But she wasn’t. The last ten pages, the most recent ones, talked about how well her treatment was going.
They spoke about how much better she was feeling and that she would treasure life more going forward.
But there was something else in those last ten pages too.
She’d fought during her entire marriage to keep us out of the criminal life that Dad leads. ”
He glanced at Beau, then shrugged. “It’s the truth. Everyone knows it.” His gaze slid to Sierra. “Even his baby girl who tries to look the other way.”
She tightened her hold on Beau’s hand. “Because I choose to dwell on the good in him.”
He winced. “Rafael and I know him far better than you. We know our real father. Yes, there’s good in him.
But there’s bad too, a whole lot of awful.
And in spite of Mom trying to steer us all clear of it, neither Rafael nor I remained as pristine as you.
You were Mom’s one hope for breaking the cycle. Her sons failed her.”
His voice broke, but he quickly sobered.
“The other stuff Mom wrote in those last ten pages, I’m sure, is why Dad killed her.
The cancer changed how she looked at things, made her more determined than ever to change us, to save us, basically, to her way of thinking.
She wrote that she’d started gathering together documentation ever since her diagnosis that would prove the most egregious crimes our father has committed.
She had evidence she was certain could send him to prison for the rest of his life. ”
“What?” Sierra demanded. “She loved him. She would never—”
“I agree with you,” Rafael said. “She wouldn’t turn him in.”
“I know, I know.” Esteban’s jaw tightened.
“I agree too. But Dad had far too much to lose. I think he was afraid to risk that she might actually do it. Her journal said she was going to tell Dad that if he didn’t stop his life of crime and get her sons out of it, she would turn over the evidence to the FBI.
That was the last entry in her journal. The day she died. ”
Rafael and Sierra exchanged pained glances.
“Where is this evidence she had?” Sierra asked.
“I don’t know. Her journal said she hid it in a special, safe place.
I think what must have happened was that she told Dad what she had and threatened to expose him if he didn’t agree to her demands.
Dad would have been infuriated, on that we can all agree.
He values loyalty above all else. I think he must have flown into a rage and killed her without even thinking about it.
Then, to cover it up, he staged her suicide.
I imagine he had regrets later, especially when he searched for the evidence she said she’d collected.
Mom might have been a poor judge of character, but she was smart about other things.
If she said she hid it somewhere safe, she did.
I believe it’s probably still wherever she put it. ”
Rafael gave him a hard look. “That’s a lot of ifs, and I thinks. What can you actually prove?”
“I can prove what I said about her getting better, that her prognosis was good. She was beating the cancer and knew it. The journal wasn’t the only thing I found in Dad’s desk.
I found the medical reports from her treatment.
I don’t have them with me, but I kept them.
I can show you later. They prove what I’ve said. ”
“About her illness,” Sierra said. “But what about Dad…hurting her? Do you have any evidence about that?”
“The empty bottle of pain pills and alleged suicide note were found by Dad with Mom’s body.
The coroner, knowing Mom was sick with cancer and faced with the note and empty bottle of pills, ruled it a suicide and no autopsy was performed.
I didn’t want to believe Dad was guilty.
I wasn’t trying to prove a murder. But I had to know the truth.
So I went to the funeral home that took care of her.
I spoke to the man who…handled her body, got it ready for the viewing.
I asked him if anything seemed out of the ordinary for an overdose death like hers.
At first he said no, but I gave him an obscene amount of money, and he told me she had bruises around her throat, big bruises like a man’s hand would make.
And her eyes were bloodshot. The coroner, not suspecting foul play, probably thought it was a side effect from her treatment. But it wasn’t.”
“Petechial hemorrhaging,” Beau said. “You think he strangled her.”
“Yes. The man I spoke to was certain of it. He’s handled bodies there for decades and knows the signs.”
Sierra shook her head. “But the police, when they came for her body, wouldn’t they have seen her eyes, the bruises, and asked questions?”
Beau shook his head. “The bruises probably wouldn’t have shown up until the body was sitting awhile.
If her eyes were closed, they wouldn’t have opened them to check for anything if the suicide staging was convincing enough—mainly because of your father’s powerful reputation.
Or maybe the police were just plain afraid of him and, since she was allegedly dying of cancer anyway, chose not to dig deeper. They took his word for it.”
“Those were my thoughts too,” Esteban said.
“It’s why I bribed the funeral guy to tell me the truth as he saw it.
She was definitely murdered. And the only person who could have done it was Dad.
Proving she was murdered is actually the easy part.
She was embalmed and buried. An exhumation would show the bruises under her makeup, the blood in her eyes, maybe damage to the bones in her throat.
They might even be able to test her body somehow to see whether any of the pain medication was actually in her system.
But even without that, I think the bruises and eyes would be enough to prove strangulation as the cause of death. ”
“I agree,” Beau said. “But then you have to prove he’s the one who did it. That’s a different legal battle altogether, even if we all agree it sounds like he’s the perpetrator.”
Sierra sat in stunned silence. Rafael was quiet too. Esteban hung his head, obviously miserable that he’d had to tell them such painful news.