“I helped him prepare everything six months ago when he realized how his illness would eventually end.”
I placed the brass key into the desk’s bottom drawer.
It opened with a sharp, satisfying click.
Inside lay a thick manila envelope and a small black USB drive that made my heart pound.
“Before you look at those, you need to know that your father added a codicil to his will just three days before he passed.”
“A codicil? What does that change?”
“It is a legal amendment,” she explained, “and believe me when I say it changes everything about tomorrow.”
I opened the manila envelope, spilling photographs, bank statements, and printed emails across the desk.
One photograph showed Tabitha in a dark parking lot passing a thick envelope to a man I did not recognize.
Another captured Calvin entering a law office that certainly did not belong to Penelope.
There were deposit slips highlighted in yellow and email chains whose contents turned my blood cold.
“Did my father actually investigate them himself?”
“He hired a private investigator the day after you told him about the infidelity,” Penelope said.
“He didn’t leave a single stone unturned.”
I picked up the USB drive and asked what it contained.
“That is a video of Tabitha trying to bribe your father’s hospice nurse to leak information about the will just two days before he died.”
I sat in complete shock while Penelope explained that the nurse had immediately contacted the authorities.
Then she handed me another photograph showing Kyle seated with Tabitha inside an elegant restaurant.