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I shrug.
“Let’s try,” he says. He grabs a pad and a pen and writes LIST at the top. “I’ll be your assistant. Tell me everything you’ve learned, and I’ll write it down.”
So I do just that:
1. Mom is supposedly alive and in trouble again, according to Cristina Cadell.
2. Cristina is a wanted fugitive in Europe for allegedly murdering her mother on a sailboat.
3. Frank, the undertaker at the funeral home where we held Mom’s memorial service, never saw her body.
4. According to Joan at Better Horizons, Mom was involved with a New York surfer guy while doing clinical work there, even though she and Dad were a couple by then.
5. The New York surfer guy visited Mom a few months before she died, but she lied and told me he was her second cousin.
6. Margot Cadell Davis was likely Mom’s old patient who could’ve told her damaging secrets about TriCPharma.
7. According to Margot’s neighbors, Margot was dating a New York surfer guy who sounded eerily similar to the man Joan said Mom was involved with.
As I’m saying everything aloud to Eddie, a thought occurs to me.
“What if my mom was in a relationship with the New York surfer guy and realized her patient Margot Cadell was too? Or maybe it was the other way around. Margot discovered her therapist was seeing her boyfriend. Either way, it would’ve been very upsetting for Margot, especially if she was pregnant with his baby. Maybe that’s why she terminated treatment with my mom, and that’s what the unopened returned letter that my mom sent her was about.”
“Could be,” Eddie says.
“Margot’s neighbors said her boyfriend was using Margot for her money. If she was insecure and settling for someone who didn’t love her, maybe she wanted Mom out of the picture to make the threat of another woman disappear.”
“Enter her cousins, the Cadell brothers,” Eddie says.
“Exactly. What if she told them she’d disclosed some of the family’s business secrets to her therapist so they’d go after my mom? It would’ve been a perfect way to do away with her boyfriend’s other girlfriend for good.”
My cell phone buzzes. I slip my hand inside my pocket to get it, feeling Mom’s charm bracelet scraping against the palm of my hand.
I look at my phone. A new text awaits me:
I’m being framed. I didn’t kill my mom.
Your mom’s running out of time too.
My heart starts to pound. The burning in my chest returns.
WHY IS MY MOM IN TROUBLE?I text Cristina back.
Message undeliverable.
I tighten my grasp on the phone, hoping to squeeze out another text, another clue … but nothing comes.
“What is it?” Eddie asks me.
I hand him my phone, and he reads Cristina’s text.
“Holy shit,” he says.
CHAPTER17
January 1998
IT HAD BEENa week since I had run away from Better Horizons. My only interaction with Emily was when I got the nurse to help her when her feeding tube was clogged.
