I did not look at the keys until the van was gone. When I did, I understood why my hand had been shaking. The brass compass tag was Hollis’s. My husband had carried that keyring for thirty-eight years, hanging by the apartment door every night of our marriage, and it had gone into a drawer the week he died. Vivienne had not copied a key from my new house at all. She had copied the originals, months before I ever saw the cliffs, from a drawer in a home she had no business opening.
The locksmith’s records confirmed it. Three separate visits over two years. My attorney found the rest: an appraiser had walked through the old apartment in March under a name I did not recognize, and Vivienne had twice called my physician’s office asking whether anyone had evaluated my decision-making. The cream card was not a warning she left. It was a draft.Continues…
