Tears started flowing down her cheeks, but they looked more like panic than genuine remorse. «Timothy, you don’t understand. I loved Richard, but our marriage was complicated. He was distant, anxious all the time. Miguel was just a friend who helped me through a difficult period.»
«A friend you were sleeping with for eight months while married to my son.»
«How do you—» She stopped, realizing she was only making things worse. «Look, I made mistakes, but Richard’s dead and nothing can change that. Can’t we just move forward as a family?»
I stared at this woman I’d welcomed into our family eight years ago. This woman I’d defended to Richard when their fights got bad. This woman who’d stood in my kitchen four days after my son’s death, crying in my arms about how much she missed him.
«You’re right about one thing, Olivia. Nothing can change the past. Nothing can change the fact that you let me bury my son alone while you were partying with your boyfriend in Mexico,» I turned toward my car. «The FBI will be in touch. I suggest you get a good lawyer.»
«Timothy, wait! Please, you have to help me! I don’t have anywhere else to turn!»
I stopped and looked back at her one last time. «You should have thought about that before you decided to cash in on Richard’s death.»
I drove away, leaving her standing alone on the porch of the house she could no longer enter. In my rearview mirror, I saw her collapse onto the front steps, her head in her hands. But I wasn’t done yet. Neither was Richard.
Twenty minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of Richard’s temporary apartment. He was waiting by the window, and I could see the tension in his shoulders even from a distance. This was the moment we’d been building toward for two weeks.
«How did she look?» he asked as I climbed the stairs to his second-floor unit.
«Terrified, exhausted, caught,» I sat down heavily in his small living room. «She tried to lie at first, but when I mentioned the FBI, the photos, and Miguel, she fell apart.»
«Good. She needs to understand that her actions have consequences,» Richard was pacing now, nervous energy radiating from him. «Tomorrow morning, she’ll wake up to find FBI agents at whatever motel she’s staying in. They’ll arrest her on insurance fraud charges, and that’s when the real consequences begin.»
«Are you ready for what comes next?»
Richard stopped pacing and looked at me directly. «Dad, I’ve been dead for two weeks. Tomorrow, I get to come back to life and watch the woman who betrayed us both face justice for what she’s done,» his expression was grim but determined. «I’ve never been more ready for anything in my life.»
Outside, snow began to fall, covering the parking lot in a thin layer of white. Tomorrow would bring the final act of our carefully orchestrated plan, and Olivia would learn that some betrayals carry a price she never imagined she’d have to pay.
The FBI arrested Olivia at 6:30 on Saturday morning at the Budget Inn where she’d spent the night. I wasn’t there to witness it, but Richard had a contact in the Bureau who called him with updates. She’d tried to run when they knocked on her door, he said, but there was nowhere to go in a motel room with one exit.
Richard and I met at the same diner where we’d been planning this moment for two weeks. He looked different this morning, lighter somehow, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. «She’s been charged with insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, and money laundering,» he told me over coffee that had grown cold while we waited for news. «Bail was set at $500,000.»
«Can she make bail?»
«With what money? Her accounts are frozen, her credit cards are maxed out from the Cancun trip, and Miguel disappeared the moment her funds dried up. Her sister might try to help, but Sarah doesn’t have that kind of cash lying around.»
I thought about Olivia sitting in a jail cell, probably still wearing the wrinkled clothes she’d traveled in. Two weeks ago, I might have felt sorry for her. Now, I felt nothing but a cold satisfaction that justice was finally being served.
«When do you come back from the dead?»
Richard smiled, the first genuine smile I’d seen from him since this whole nightmare began. «This afternoon. Dr. Peterson has everything arranged with the hospital administration and the police. The official story is that there was a mix-up with patient identification, that Richard Morrison was in a coma rather than dead, and that he’s made a miraculous recovery.»
«Will anyone believe that?»
«It doesn’t matter if they believe it. What matters is that it’s legally documented and medically supported. Dr. Peterson has colleagues who will swear to the confusion, and the hospital’s lawyers have already agreed to treat it as a medical error rather than fraud,» Richard leaned forward. «The beauty of it is that once I’m officially alive again, all of Olivia’s insurance claims become void automatically. She’ll owe back every penny she collected, plus interest and penalties.»
«She’ll go to prison.»
«For a long time. David thinks she’s looking at ten to fifteen years, especially if she refuses to cooperate with the investigation into the other fraudulent policies,» Richard’s expression hardened. «And she’ll cooperate because she’s going to learn some very interesting information about her boyfriend, Miguel.»
«What kind of information?»
«Miguel wasn’t just a gardener having an affair with a married woman. He’s been running a long con targeting lonely wives in wealthy suburbs. Olivia is the third woman he seduced and convinced to defraud their husbands’ life insurance. The FBI has been tracking him for eighteen months.»
The scope of Olivia’s stupidity was staggering. «She thought she was playing Richard, but Miguel had been playing her all along. She was just another mark.»
«Exactly. Miguel probably encouraged her to take out those extra insurance policies, helped her research ways to make Richard’s death look natural, maybe even suggested the mental instability angle,» Richard shook his head. «She thought she was the predator, but she was just prey for a bigger predator.»
«Where is Miguel now?»
«Mexico, probably. Or maybe Costa Rica. Somewhere without an extradition treaty. But the FBI will catch up to him eventually,» Richard looked out the diner window at the gray October morning. «The important thing is that Olivia is going to realize she threw away eight years of marriage, destroyed her life, and went to prison all for a man who never cared about her at all.»
At two o’clock that afternoon, I drove to the hospital to witness my son’s resurrection. Dr. Peterson met me in the lobby, looking nervous but determined. He was risking his career to help Richard, but he’d explained that he couldn’t stand by and watch a good man be destroyed by a predatory wife.
«Are you ready for this, Timothy?» he asked as we walked toward the elevator.
«I’ve been ready for weeks.»
Richard’s hospital room was on the fourth floor, the same floor where he’d supposedly died two weeks earlier. When I walked in, he was sitting up in bed dressed in a hospital gown, looking appropriately weak and confused for someone who’d just emerged from a coma.
