Chapter 4 - The Missing Folder
Detective Luis Morales met Emily at the hospital that evening.
He was in his early forties, with tired eyes and a careful way of speaking.
“We searched the living room,” he said. “The mugs and pill organizer were collected. We also found signs that someone had handled documents on the coffee table.”
“What documents?”
“We don’t know. There was an empty space in the dust beneath the lamp, about the size of a legal folder.”
Emily remembered the leather folder Rebecca always carried.
“Did you check the camera?”
“Your father’s security account shows the camera has been offline for several months.”
“It blinked.”
“That may have been a battery indicator.”
Emily shook her head. “My father bought that model because it had internal storage.”
Morales studied her.
“Are you sure?”
“He didn’t trust cloud subscriptions. He wanted recordings saved inside the device.”
The detective wrote something in his notebook.
Before leaving, he asked whether anyone might benefit financially from her parents’ deaths.
Emily hated the question.
“My brother and I are named in their will, but neither of us needs their money.”
“What about debt?”
“Daniel has a mortgage. I have student loans. That’s normal.”
“Anyone else?”
“Rebecca controls their investments.”
Morales closed his notebook.
“Control and ownership are different things.”
“They are supposed to be.”
At midnight, Emily’s father briefly regained consciousness.
His eyes opened halfway.
“Dad, it’s Emily.”
His fingers moved weakly.
“Folder,” he whispered.
“What folder?”
“Don’t sign.”
Then his eyes closed again.
Emily felt the room tilt beneath her.
“Dad?”
A nurse stepped forward and checked his monitor.
“He’s stable. Let him rest.”
Emily sat beside him until sunrise, repeating his words in her mind.
May you like
Folder.
Don’t sign.
