Chelsea stood up abruptly.
“That bitch always hated me,” she snapped. “She was jealous because her father loved me more than her.”
“Sit down,” I said in a firm voice. “Because I’m not done yet.”
I changed the photo on the tablet. Now Franklin Adams appeared.
“Franklin Adams,” I said. “Fifty-eight years old. He fell down the stairs of his house. He died three weeks later. You inherited $3,200,000. The security cameras were conveniently broken that night.”
“It was an accident,” Chelsea insisted.
“A very convenient accident,” I said. “Especially considering that Franklin had updated his will a week before, leaving you everything. And especially suspicious when we spoke with his personal doctor, who told us that Franklin was considering divorcing you because he had discovered suspicious transfers from his bank account.”
Rob looked at me.
“Is that true?” he asked.
“Completely true,” Spencer replied. “We have bank statements showing transfers of $150,000 over three months from Franklin’s account to a Cayman Islands account—an account shared by Chelsea and Gerald Hayes.”
Chelsea was livid now.
“Those are lies,” she said.
“They’re not,” I interrupted. “And then there’s Joseph Vega—and his son Paul.”
I placed another photo on the table. A young man of twenty-six, smiling in a university graduation photo.
“Paul Vega,” I said. “Civil engineer, like his father. He disappeared six months after you married Joseph. He left a text message saying he was going abroad. He has never been heard from again.”
“That boy decided to leave on his own,” Chelsea said.
“He didn’t,” I said firmly. “Because we found Paul.”
The silence was absolute. Even the restaurant noise seemed to stop.
“What?” Chelsea whispered.
Linda approached with another laptop. A video appeared on the screen. It was a thin young man with an unkempt beard, sitting in what looked like a hospital room. I pressed play.
The young man in the video began to speak.
“My name is Paul Vega Rodríguez. I am thirty years old. Four years ago, Chelsea Brooks—my father’s wife—drugged me with something in my coffee. When I woke up, I was in a place I didn’t recognize. A man named Gerald Hayes told me that if I returned to the States or contacted my father, he would make sure my father had a fatal accident. He gave me money, a fake passport, and sent me to Guatemala. I’ve lived there ever since, afraid to return. But when investigator Davis found me and told me that Chelsea was doing the same thing to another family, I knew I had to speak up.”
