Chapter 13 - The Missing Chart
At the sheriff's office, Celeste gave a recorded statement and surrendered her phone. She showed investigators messages from Keene, bank transfers into her brother's account, and a scanned invoice from Margaret's care facility.
None of it proved murder. Adrian knew that. He also knew someone had tried hard to prevent him from asking questions.
The care facility's director, Dr. Helen Ward, initially refused to discuss records without authorization. With the appropriate legal documents, investigators obtained the chart history and discovered entries had been altered after Margaret's death.
The changes affected visiting records and the notation about a private consultation she had requested shortly before being hospitalized.
“Could she have survived?” Nora asked a medical reviewer.
“We can't answer that from what we have,” the reviewer said. “We can say the records were changed, and we need to know why.”
Adrian appreciated the careful answer even as it hurt him.
That night, he visited his mother's room for the first time since her funeral. Her reading glasses lay beside a half-finished crossword. An ordinary sweater hung over a chair.
He sat on the bed and called her old voicemail number. The recording said, in the same practical voice he had known all his life, “Leave me a message, sweetheart. And eat something.”
He didn't leave one.
Mateo knocked softly. “Lucy wants to see you.”
She stood in the doorway holding a folded drawing. It showed Margaret in the garden, holding hands with Lucy and Ben.
“She said families aren't just the people whose names are on your mailbox,” Lucy explained.
Adrian swallowed hard. “She was right.”
Lucy pointed to the corner of the drawing. There was a third child, older than the others, drawn beside a warehouse.
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“Mom said that girl helped her when she was little. Her name was Isabel.”
Mateo dropped the tray he was carrying.
