Chapter 13 - The Visitor at Mount Sinai
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For a full minute, the only sound in my sunlit Upper West Side dining room was the ticking of the antique wall clock that had belonged to my father.
My hands were shaking so badly that the yellowed pages of Detective Frank Russo’s investigative report rattled against the oak tabletop.
If I die at Mount Sinai before I can get this file to Diane, check the toxicology report on my IV line—because Marcus visited my hospital room alone last night.
"Clara..." Diane whispered, her face white as chalk as she read over my shoulder. For thirty years Diane Sterling had practiced high-stakes estate law in Manhattan, and nothing rattled her—until now. "Your father died of sudden acute potassium-induced cardiac arrest at two in the morning on October fourteenth, two years ago. The doctors at Mount Sinai ruled it natural heart failure secondary to his kidney disease, so no autopsy toxicology screen was ever ordered before cremation!"
A choked sob tore from my throat as I pressed both hands over my face.
My dad.
My warm, gruff, fiercely protective father, who had walked me down the aisle and held baby Leo in his arms three days before he died—he hadn't died because his heart gave out naturally!
Two years ago, my father had uncovered the truth that Marcus Vance was actually Marcus Hayes—a predator who had walked away with two million dollars after his first wife died in a suspicious staircase fall in Boston, and who had come to New York with his partner-in-crime, "Brenda," posing as brother and sister to hunt down another grieving heiress with a multimillion-dollar family estate!
And when my father had confronted Marcus from his hospital bed at Mount Sinai—or when Greg Miller had intercepted this envelope and warned Marcus that my father knew about Boston—Marcus had walked into Room 814 during night visiting hours and injected potassium straight into my father’s IV line!
And then, eight months later, why had Marcus started putting high-dose hormones and birth control pills into my daily vitamin organizer while trying to drain the rest of my father’s $3.6 million trust?!
Because once the money cleared into the Cayman Islands on December thirty-first, I wasn't supposed to be foreclosed on in March like Marcus had told Greg in the email.
I was supposed to suffer a "tragic, unexpected postpartum blood clot or stroke" in our isolated Westchester house in January—just like Evelyn Hayes in Boston—leaving Marcus as the grieving widower who inherited everything back through Leo!
"Wait," I breathed, tearing my hands away from my face as cold, lethal adrenaline flooded every vein in my body. "If my father was cremated two years ago, how do we prove Marcus murdered him in that hospital room?!"
"Look at the hospital visitor receipt clipped to the envelope," Diane said sharply, her legal mind snapping into overdrive as she pulled out her reading magnifying glass. "Your father wrote that letter on the night of October thirteenth—the night before he died. When hospital patients at Mount Sinai have private estate documents notarized at their bedside, the hospital patient-relations coordinator has to sign as a witness and log it on the security floor camera."
I flipped to the back of Detective Russo’s file.
Pinned to the inside back cover was a tiny, silver micro-SD card taped inside a business card holder labeled: MOUNT SINAI VIP CARDIAC WING — NURSE CALL / BEDSIDE MONITOR AUDIO LOG (OCT 13).
"My dad didn't have a camera in his room," I gasped, grabbing the laptop and sliding the micro-SD card into the side adapter slot, "he had Detective Russo wire a voice-activated digital recorder inside his bedside reading lamp the day he checked into the hospital in case Marcus came to threaten him!"
Diane and I leaned over the laptop screen as the single MP3 audio file from October 13 — 11:42 PM clicked open.
From the laptop speakers came the rhythmic, steady beep... beep... beep of my father’s cardiac monitor in Room 814, followed by the soft click of the heavy hospital door closing.
Then came my father’s weak, gravelly voice:
"I told you not to come back here without Clara, Marcus. By nine o’clock tomorrow morning, Diane Sterling will have the Boston police file on Evelyn Hayes and the DNA test proving Brenda isn't your sister."
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And then, crystal clear on the recording, came two voices replying in the dark—not just Marcus’s cold, mocking baritone, but the voice of the woman standing beside him holding the syringe:
"Diane Sterling won't be getting anything tomorrow morning, old man," Brenda’s voice purred over the speaker. "Hold his arm still so the line doesn't bruise, Marcus."
