But I couldn’t keep my distance. Not when Tony had whispered to me as I’d said goodbye, his voice barely audible over Michelle’s presence: “Mom, something’s wrong. I don’t know what, but something’s really wrong. Help me.”
The next morning, James Morella called. “Roxanne, I found what you asked for. Michelle has both medical and financial power of attorney for Tony. Signed and notarized six weeks ago.”
My stomach dropped. “Six weeks? But Tony was still in the hospital then, barely conscious.”
“According to the notary’s signature, Tony signed these documents in his right mind, fully aware of what he was doing.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I thought you might say that. Roxanne, there’s something else. The lawyer handling Tony’s settlement case? He’s filed paperwork to have the check deposited directly into an account accessible only by the power of attorney holder, meaning Michelle.”
“Can he do that?”
“If the power of attorney is legitimate and Tony is deemed unable to manage his own affairs, yes.”
“What if the power of attorney was obtained fraudulently?”
A long pause. “Then we’d need to prove it. And fast. Because, Roxanne, according to the court filings I accessed, that settlement check clears in seventeen days.”
I hung up and immediately called Detective Park. “We have a problem,” I said. “Michelle has power of attorney and the settlement money goes directly to her. We’re running out of time.”
“I know. We got the warrant approved this morning. We’re moving in tomorrow to search Dr. Harrison’s office and records.”
“Tomorrow might be too late.”
“Mrs. Sullivan? Roxanne? I need you to trust the process. Do not do anything to spook them. If Michelle suspects we’re investigating, she could move up her timeline or disappear entirely.”
But that night, my phone rang at 11:00 PM. It was Tony. His voice was panicked and slurred.
“Mom, I can’t find Michelle. I woke up and she’s gone. All her clothes are gone. Mom, what’s happening?”
“I’m coming right now. Don’t move. Don’t do anything. I’m on my way.”
I called Detective Park as I sped toward Tony’s house. “Michelle’s running. Right now. She’s already gone.”
“How could she know we were…” Detective Park swore. “Someone tipped her off. Stay with Tony. I’m sending units to the house and putting out an alert for Michelle.”
When I arrived, Tony was in his wheelchair in the living room, looking lost and terrified. I searched the house quickly. Michelle had taken her clothes, her laptop, and from what I could tell, every document related to Tony’s medical care and the settlement.
“She’s been lying to me, hasn’t she?” Tony’s voice was broken. “All this time.”
I knelt beside his wheelchair and took his hands. “Yes, sweetheart, but we’re going to fix this. I promise you, we’re going to fix this.”
But even as I said it, I knew the worst was yet to come. Because seventeen days from now, a check for $2.3 million would clear into an account controlled by a woman who’d just vanished into the night. And somewhere out there, Michelle and Dr. Harrison were together, executing the final phase of whatever plan they’d been building all along.
The police arrived within fifteen minutes—two uniformed officers followed by Detective Park, who looked furious and exhausted. She immediately began directing the officers to photograph the house, document what was missing, and put out alerts for Michelle and her vehicle.
I stayed with Tony, who seemed to be cycling through shock, confusion, and a desperate need to understand what had happened.
“How long?” he asked me for the third time. “How long has this been going on?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart, but we’re going to find out.”
Detective Park pulled up a chair across from us. “Tony, I need to ask you some questions. Are you feeling clear-headed enough to talk?”
“I don’t know what I’m feeling,” he admitted, rubbing his face with both hands. “I keep thinking I should have seen it, but I can’t remember half of what’s happened these past few months. It’s all foggy.”
“That’s because you’ve been systematically drugged,” Detective Park said bluntly. “We’ll need to get you to a hospital, run a full toxicology panel. Whatever medications Michelle was giving you, they weren’t what she claimed.”
“Drugged,” Tony repeated, like he was trying to understand the word.
I squeezed his hand. “We’re going to get you help.”
Detective Park’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it, then stood abruptly. “Excuse me a moment.”
She stepped into the kitchen, but I could hear her voice rising. “What do you mean you can’t find her? She left less than two hours ago. Checked traffic cameras, credit cards, everything.”
When she returned, her expression was grim. “Michelle’s car was found abandoned at a shopping center parking lot about ten miles from here. She switched vehicles. We’re checking security footage now.”
“She planned this,” I said. “She knew you were investigating. Someone warned her. Someone with access to information about our case.”
Detective Park looked at Tony. “The lawyer handling your settlement, Henderson & Associates. Did Michelle have a lot of contact with them?”
“I guess. She handled all that. I was supposed to sign some final papers this week, but Michelle said we could do it later after I was feeling stronger.”
Tony’s eyes widened. “The papers? She wanted me to sign papers. What was I signing?”
“We need to find out. Now.” Detective Park was already on her phone. “Get me a judge. I need an emergency order to freeze all accounts associated with the Sullivan settlement case. Yes, I know what time it is. This is urgent.”
Over the next hour, the house filled with activity. A paramedic arrived to check Tony’s vital signs and draw blood for testing. A forensic accountant joined us, spreading papers across the dining room table. And James Morella showed up after I called him, despite the late hour.
“Good grief, Roxanne,” he said when he saw the chaos. “What have you gotten into?”
“We’re trying to prevent my son from being robbed of his settlement and possibly his life.”
James’s eyebrows shot up, but he immediately shifted into lawyer mode. “What do you need?”
By two in the morning, we had a clearer picture, and it was worse than I’d imagined. The forensic accountant, a sharp-eyed woman named Dr. Rice, laid it out for us.
“Michelle opened three separate accounts over the past six months. The one Roxanne photographed has $47,000. That appears to be from fraudulent insurance claims filed for therapy sessions that never happened. But there’s more.”
She pulled up bank statements on her laptop. “Two weeks ago, Michelle took out a $200,000 loan using this house as collateral. She used the power of attorney to do it without Tony’s knowledge.”
“She mortgaged our house?” Tony looked stricken. “But we’d almost paid it off.”
“Not anymore,” Dr. Rice said. “The money from that loan was wired to an offshore account. We’re trying to trace it now, but these things are set up to be difficult to follow.”
“And the settlement check?” James asked.
“That’s the real prize. $2.3 million, set to be deposited directly into an account that Michelle controls. Once that money hits, she can transfer it anywhere in the world in a matter of hours.”
Detective Park leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “So we freeze the accounts, get a court order to stop the settlement deposit, invalidate the power of attorney.”
“It’s not that simple,” James interrupted. “The power of attorney was legally notarized. Unless we can prove Tony was mentally incompetent when he signed it.”
“I was,” Tony said. “I don’t even remember signing it.”
“Then we need the notary to testify that you weren’t in your right mind. And we need the medical records showing what medications you were actually taking, which Michelle has apparently taken with her.”
“Dr. Harrison will have copies,” I said.
“Dr. Harrison is in the wind, too,” Detective Park informed us. “We went to execute the search warrant at his office an hour ago. Cleaned out. His receptionist showed up for work this morning and found the file cabinets empty, the computer hard drives missing. He’d been there sometime during the night.”
The room fell silent.
“They’ve been planning this for a long time,” I said quietly. “This wasn’t opportunistic. This was calculated, methodical. Which means they’ll have contingency plans.”
Detective Park agreed. “Michelle knew we were getting close. Someone tipped her off and she activated her exit strategy. The question is, what else did she activate?”
Her phone rang. She answered, listened, and her face went pale. “When? How much?” A pause. “Track it. Now.” She hung up and looked at Tony.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but fifteen minutes ago, someone accessed your joint checking account and transferred out the entire balance. $32,000.”
“That’s impossible,” Tony said. “I have my debit card right here.”
“She had online access and apparently a lot of your personal information.” Detective Park’s jaw was tight. “She’s burning everything, taking whatever she can get her hands on before we freeze her out completely.”
James was already typing on his phone. “I’m filing an emergency motion first thing in the morning, but Tony, you need to understand. Even if we stop the settlement money from going to Michelle, if that power of attorney is deemed valid, the court might put the funds in a trust until this is sorted out. That could take months, maybe years.”
“I don’t care about the money,” Tony said, his voice breaking. “I just want to understand why. We were happy. I loved her. Why would she do this to me?”
No one had an answer for that.
At 3:00 AM, Detective Park sent everyone home except the officer stationed outside the house. I refused to leave Tony alone, so I settled into the guest room after helping him to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I lay in the darkness, my mind racing through everything we knew, everything we’d discovered.
Michelle and Dr. Harrison had known each other before the accident. They’d been planning this. But how long? And was the accident itself… No, that was too dark a thought. Even Michelle couldn’t have arranged for a delivery truck to hit her own husband. Could she?
At 6:00 AM, I gave up on sleep and made coffee. Tony wheeled himself into the kitchen twenty minutes later, looking as exhausted as I felt.
“Did you sleep at all?” I asked.
“Not really. Mom, I’ve been thinking. The accident. I’ve been trying to remember the details.”
“Tony, you don’t have to.”
“I need to. Because there’s something that’s been bothering me.” He accepted the coffee I handed him. “That day, I was supposed to meet Michelle for lunch. Downtown at that Italian place we liked. But at the last minute, she called and asked me to pick her up from Dr. Harrison’s office instead.”
My hands stilled on my coffee cup. “Michelle asked you to go there?”
“Yeah. She said her car was making a weird noise and she didn’t want to drive it. She asked me to get her and we’d take my car to the restaurant.” He stared into his coffee. “The accident happened two blocks from Dr. Harrison’s office. That delivery truck ran the red light right as I was turning.”
“Tony, are you saying…”
“I’m saying Michelle sent me to that exact location at that exact time. And she wasn’t there. When I woke up in the hospital, she said she’d still been inside the office waiting. She came to the hospital as soon as she heard.”
We looked at each other, the horrifying possibility hanging between us.
“We need to tell Detective Park,” I said.
But before I could reach for my phone, the doorbell rang. Through the front window, I saw a silver sedan in the driveway. A woman in an expensive suit stood on the porch, holding a briefcase. I opened the door cautiously.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Roxanne Sullivan?” Her smile was professional, polished. “My name is Victoria Brennan. I’m an attorney representing Michelle Sullivan. May I come in?”
“Absolutely not.”
“I understand you’re upset, but I have documents that need to be signed. Time-sensitive documents regarding the settlement and Tony’s ongoing care.”
“Tony isn’t signing anything without his own lawyer present.”
Victoria’s smile never wavered. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. You see, Mrs. Sullivan, Michelle holds power of attorney. She’s authorized to make all legal and medical decisions on Tony’s behalf. These documents simply formalize the transfer of the settlement funds to the appropriate medical trust that’s been established for Tony’s long-term care.”
“That’s a lie.” Tony appeared behind me in his wheelchair. “I never authorized a medical trust.”
“Mr. Sullivan, I understand you’re confused. Your wife has been very concerned about your memory issues and cognitive impairment. In fact, she’s filed paperwork to have you declared legally incompetent due to traumatic brain injury sustained in the accident.”
“What?” Tony and I said simultaneously.
Victoria pulled papers from her briefcase. “This is a psychiatric evaluation conducted by Dr. Harrison declaring Tony Sullivan unable to manage his affairs or make competent legal decisions. It’s been filed with the court as of yesterday afternoon.”
“That’s fraud,” I said. “Dr. Harrison is under investigation.”
“Dr. Harrison is a licensed physician with an impeccable record. His medical opinion carries significant weight. And Mrs. Sullivan, I need to inform you that Michelle is also filing a restraining order against you.”
“Against me?”
“She believes you’ve been interfering in her marriage, causing undue stress, and attempting to manipulate Tony against her. The restraining order requires you to stay at least 500 feet away from Tony at all times.”
“That’s insane.”
“The order has been approved by Judge Matthews. It goes into effect immediately. You need to leave this house now, Mrs. Sullivan, or I’ll be forced to call the police.”
I looked at Tony, saw the panic in his eyes. “I’m not leaving my son.”
“Then you’ll be arrested.” Victoria pulled out her phone. “Your choice.”
“Wait.” Detective Park’s voice came from behind Victoria. She’d apparently been approaching the house when we opened the door. “I don’t think so, Ms. Brennan.”
Victoria turned, her eyes narrowing. “Detective Park. How convenient.”
“Roxanne Sullivan is a material witness in an active criminal investigation. She’s also staying in this house at the request of the police department to ensure Tony Sullivan’s safety.”
“And that restraining order?” Park continued, stepping onto the porch. “I’m going to have that thrown out by noon. Judge Matthews is a friend of my father’s, and he’s going to be very interested to hear that he signed an order based on fraudulent psychiatric testimony.”
“You can’t prove…”
“I can prove a lot of things, including that you, Ms. Brennan, received a wire transfer of $50,000 from an offshore account two days ago. The same account Michelle Sullivan has been funneling money into. So not only are you complicit in this fraud, you’re an active participant.”
Victoria’s face went white. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then you won’t mind coming down to the station to answer some questions. In fact, I insist.” Detective Park pulled out handcuffs. “Victoria Brennan, you’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering.”
As Detective Park read Victoria her rights and led her to the police car, I put my arm around Tony’s shoulders.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” he said quietly.
“It’s getting resolved,” I corrected. “One piece at a time. They’re desperate, making mistakes. That’s good for us.”
But even as I said it, I knew we were approaching the real crisis point. Michelle and Dr. Harrison had spent months building their scheme. They weren’t going to let it fall apart without a fight. And somewhere out there, they were planning their next move.
My phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number. Tell Tony I’m sorry it had to be this way, but the money’s mine and he’ll never see a penny. You should have minded your own business, Roxanne.
