Unraveling the Plot
With eerie composure, Dad asked her why on earth she was telling people he was dead. Her frantic explanations shifted and morphed with every sentence, but Dad keyed in on something far more sinister: she and Grant had already scheduled a property appraiser to evaluate his truck and a professional cleaning crew to tear through his home office.
As it turned out, Dad had been staying with me temporarily because his furnace had broken down during a brutal winter storm. He was supposed to return home once the repairs were complete, but Vanessa apparently had no idea he was at my place; she and Grant firmly believed he was isolated at home.
The conspiracy unraveled further when Dad dialed Harold, his longtime friend and the retired owner of the local funeral home. Harold revealed that someone had recently contacted his office inquiring about Dad’s prepaid arrangements and asking precisely what paperwork would be required if someone died at home. Next, Dad called his estate attorney and discovered that Vanessa had also been probing for loopholes on how to access estate property during a medical emergency. To top it all off, we found that someone had tried to clone or transfer Dad’s cell phone number to an outside device.
Determined to stop them, Dad and I drove straight to his house. We arrived to find Vanessa, Grant, a bewildered locksmith, and a guy standing by with clipboards ready to appraise the truck.
Dad immediately called the local police, who arrived and thoroughly documented the attempted takeover. Vanessa burst into theatrical tears, insisting that they were just “panicking out of grief.” Dad calmly pointed out that they had planned to change his locks and liquidate his belongings before they even had a death certificate—or a body.
