Chapter 5 - The Midnight Dig
While Cynthia was busy fighting the asset freeze, we moved on the gravesite.
At 2:00 a.m. on a rainy Tuesday, heavy machinery rolled onto the private Vance family cemetery on the edge of the estate. Marcus stood under an umbrella beside me, along with a private medical examiner I had flown in from New York.
Watching the backhoe tear into the earth above my father's grave was the hardest thing I had ever done. It felt like I was failing him all over again.
"Captain," Thomas, the estate manager, said softly, standing at my elbow. "Your father would be proud of you. He knew you were the only one strong enough to handle this."
When the heavy bronze casket was hoisted from the mud, the medical examiner immediately took custody of it.
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"Heavy metals like arsenic or thallium settle into the hair and bone marrow," the examiner explained. "Even after four months, if she poisoned him, it will be there. I'll have the results rushed in forty-eight hours."
As the vans drove away, I stared at the empty hole in the ground. The rain mixed with the tears I finally allowed myself to shed. I promised my father right then and there: Cynthia would pay for every second of agony she caused him.
