Chapter 2: Bertha’s Voice
The siren swelled outside the chapel, then cut off.
Diane kept the package clenched in her fist as Detective Cho came through the doors with a uniformed officer behind her. The room smelled of lilies and hot wax. Beyond the open chapel doors, relatives clustered in the hall, their whispers stopping as Cho crossed toward Diane.
Christopher had gone to them. He stood beneath a framed print of a country church, one hand pressed to his mouth while Bertha’s aunt held his arm. His shoulders shuddered once. From a distance, he looked like a man struggling to stay upright.
Then his eyes found Diane.
The grief fell away.
“Detective,” Diane said. “He tried to take this.”
“I didn’t try to take anything,” Christopher called. His voice cracked neatly on the last word. “I’m trying to keep my family from being torn apart.”
Cho didn’t look toward him. “Let’s see what you found.”
Mr. Alvarez ushered them into his office, a cramped room smelling of paper, coffee, and furniture polish. Veronica stayed close to Diane’s side. Cho asked the officer to remain at the door, then opened a small evidence bag.
“Tell me exactly what happened when you removed it.”
Diane did. She kept her voice steady, though her fingers had begun to ache around the package. When Cho asked her to set it down, Diane hesitated.
“I know,” Cho said, gentler. “But we need to know what’s inside.”
Under the detective’s careful hands, the clear wrapping gave way. A compact recorder lay beside a flat memory card. Diane stared at them. Her daughter had planned for someone to find these—and had hidden them where her own mother would have to touch her to do it.
Veronica pressed her cheek to Diane’s sleeve.
“Mommy knew,” she whispered.
Diane swallowed. “I think she hoped.”
Cho examined the recorder, then glanced at the card.
“We can listen to a file here,” she said. “I’ll document what we hear and get the device secured. No one leaves with it.”
Outside, Christopher’s voice rose, soothing and wounded.
“She’s confused. Diane’s been looking for a reason to blame me since Bertha died.”
The officer at the door shifted, but Cho kept her attention on the recorder. She turned it on. A list of dated files appeared on its small screen. One was marked CLEAR.
“Ready?” Cho asked Diane.
No, Diane thought. But she nodded.
A soft click came from the recorder, followed by the scrape of a chair. Then Bertha spoke.
“Where did Veronica’s money go?”
The sound of her voice filled the little office—low, strained, unmistakably alive. Diane’s hand flew to her mouth. For one impossible instant, she expected Bertha to step through the door with her coat over one arm, annoyed that everyone was making such a fuss.
Christopher answered on the recording, his voice smooth.
“You’re making an accusation you can’t support.”
“I have the statements.”
“You have pieces of paper.”
“I have transfers out of her account, and I have your name on them.”
A pause. The faint clink of glass.
“That money was for her,” Bertha said. “You don’t get to take it because you’re angry at me.”
Diane shut her eyes. Her daughter had known. She had been frightened and still had tried to protect Veronica. The ache of it came sharp and hot, as if grief had found a new place to cut.
On the recording, Christopher’s voice hardened.
“You’ve been wearing that patch again?”
“It’s prescribed.”
“You don’t know what it’s doing to you.”
“Don’t touch it.”
Then came a rustle, a sudden scrape, Bertha’s sharp intake of breath.
“You took it off,” she said.
“I removed something that was making you paranoid.”
“Give it back.”
“No one is going to believe you over me.”
The file ended with a click.
For a moment, the only sound was Veronica breathing against Diane’s arm. Cho stopped the recorder. Her face had gone still in the way Diane recognized from emergency rooms: attention gathering around a fact too serious to mishandle.
Diane opened her eyes. “He knew about the patch.”
Cho nodded once. “And he knew about the money.”
“He said no one would believe her.” Diane’s voice faltered. “She was trying to tell someone.”
Veronica pulled closer. “Mommy was scared.”
Diane wrapped an arm around her. This time, there was no question she could ask that would make the answer gentler.
Cho returned to the file list. One entry showed a damaged icon. She tapped it. A burst of static spat from the speaker, followed by a broken fragment of Bertha’s voice.
“—if anything happens, Reed said he would—”
The sound dissolved into digital crackle.
Cho stopped playback. “Dr. Reed?”
Diane’s stomach tightened. The name sat on Bertha’s death paperwork beneath the explanation of cardiac arrest. She had read it before, but then it had seemed like one more detail in a form she couldn’t bear to understand.
Now it sounded different.
The office door swung open. Christopher stood there, his face wet, his grief restored for anyone watching from the hall.
“You can’t keep my daughter from me,” he said. “And you can’t turn a private conversation into proof of anything.”
Cho stepped between him and Veronica. “Wait outside.”
“I’m her father.”
“And I’m asking you to wait outside.”
His gaze darted to the evidence bag. For a fraction of a second, his face betrayed him. Then he looked at Diane, eyes shining.
“Bertha wouldn’t want you doing this to her.”
Diane held Veronica’s hand. “You don’t get to tell me what she wanted.”
Christopher’s expression tightened. He backed into the hall, where relatives gathered around him again. A woman began to cry; he lowered his head and accepted her embrace.
Cho sealed the recorder and card. Her phone buzzed. She read the screen, and the line between her brows deepened.
May you like
“What is it?” Diane asked.
“Reed just reported his clinic broken into,” Cho said. “He’s accusing you of taking Bertha’s files.”
