Page 105 of Past Due

“No problem,” Detective Kermally said and waved her inside. “Marley, this is Detective Gibson. She’s with the Missing Persons Unit. I asked her to help on this case.”

Detective Gibson exchanged greetings with us and then took the empty seat next to Eric. She opened the cover on her tablet and tapped at the screen. For the next half hour, she asked all sorts of questions about my mother. Eric and Detective Kermally left the interrogation room for a while, but I suspected they were in the room next door, watching us through the window and listening to everything I said.

“Does your mother have access to large amounts of money? Cash or credit cards?” Detective Gibson asked.

Besian caught my eye and nodded to encourage me to be honest. Feeling embarrassment yet again, I admitted, “My mom cleaned out my accounts while I was overseas.”

Detective Gibson’s businesslike manner slipped for a moment, and she showed her maternal side. “Your mother left you abroad without any money?”

“Yeah.”

Detective Gibson glanced at Besian and then back to me. “Does she do that often? Steal from you?”

“I wouldn’t call it stealing, exactly,” I answered, unable to label my mother a thief. “She borrows money.”

“And doesn’t pay it back?” the detective guessed.

“No, not usually,” I admitted.

“Was she a signatory on your accounts?”

“We share one account that I keep a little money in for her to access.”

“Which bank?”

“The one in Walmart,” I said, drawing a blank.

“Woodforest,” Besian supplied. “That’s the branch in all of the area Walmart stores.”

Of course, he would know that.

“And the other accounts? She wasn’t a signatory on those?”

“No.”

“But she was able to access them?”

“My desktop in my office has all of my passwords saved in the browser. She wouldn’t have had any trouble logging in and moving money from my accounts to hers or sending it to Western Union.”

“And you weren’t aware of the transfers?”

“I didn’t have cell service or WiFi in the areas I was hiking. By the time I did, it was too late. All the money was gone.”

“How much was she able to take total?”

“A little over seventeen thousand,” I said, avoiding Besian’s stare. I hadn’t told him the actual number yet, and I could feel the waves of frustration and anger radiating from him.

“That’s quite a sum,” Detective Gibson remarked. “How long did it take you to save that?”

“Years,” I said, not wanting to think about all the extra shifts I had taken at the pawn shop or how lean my budget had been to scrimp and save to make my dream of traveling Europe a reality.

The questions continued until she had all the information she needed. Detective Kermally returned to ask me for a DNA swab to exclude my DNA from the scene and to ask for the keys to my mother’s home.

“What about your car?” Detective Kermally asked. “Was it parked at your house while you were gone?”

“No, it’s been Aston’s garage since the day I left.”

“Aston?” Detective Kermally frowned and glanced at Detective Gibson. “Why is that name familiar?”

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