PART 3 — THE TRANSFER DALE COULDN’T EXPLAIN
I stared at Dale’s signature until the letters stopped looking like a name.
Forty thousand dollars.
Six weeks before Grandpa died.
Authorized by my cousin.
Mrs. Whitaker didn’t say anything for several seconds.
Then she quietly pulled the paper closer to herself.
“Do you know whether your cousin had power of attorney?”
“He did,” I said. “Near the end.”
She nodded slowly.
“That would explain how he was able to request certain transactions.”
“But it doesn’t explain why.”
“No.”
Her answer was calm, but something about it made my stomach tighten.
“Where did the money go?”
She hesitated.
“I’m not able to disclose information about another customer’s account without proper authorization.”
“So it went to another account?”
“I didn’t say that.”
She didn’t need to.
I sat back in the chair.
For years, Dale had been the cousin everyone trusted with paperwork.
Taxes.
Insurance.
Grandpa’s prescriptions.
Utility bills.
Whenever Grandpa complained that something didn’t look right, Dale would laugh and tell him he was reading the wrong statement.
And we believed Dale.
Or maybe we simply found it easier to believe him.
My phone rang again.
This time it was Alan.
I answered.
“What?”
“Nancy, don’t leave the bank.”
That got my attention.
“Why?”
“I just talked to Pam.”
“And?”
“She’s saying things.”
“What things?”
There was silence.
“Alan?”
“She says Dale moved money before Grandpa died.”
I looked at Mrs. Whitaker.
“How much does she know?”
“I don’t know. She’s scared.”
“Scared of what?”
Another pause.
Then Alan said, “She says there was more than one transfer.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
Mrs. Whitaker must have seen my face change.
“What happened?” she asked.
I put Alan on speaker.
“Say it again.”
Alan sighed.
“Pam says Dale moved money more than once.”
Mrs. Whitaker’s expression became serious.
“How many times?”
“I don’t know,” Alan said. “She won’t tell me over the phone.”
“Tell her to come back.”
“She already is.”
Ten minutes later, Pam walked into the bank alone.
No Dale.
Her eyes were red, and she was holding a manila folder against her chest.
She looked at me, then at Mrs. Whitaker.
“I didn’t know how much he moved.”
Nobody spoke.
Pam sat down.
“I thought it was just enough to pay bills.”
“Forty thousand dollars?” I asked.
She looked away.
“That wasn’t the first one.”
My chest went cold.
“How many?”
“Three that I know about.”
Mrs. Whitaker immediately stopped her.
“If you’re discussing potentially unauthorized financial activity, you may want legal advice before making statements.”
Pam shook her head.
“I’m done protecting him.”
She placed the folder on the desk.
Inside were photocopies of bank statements.
Grandpa’s statements.
I recognized his address.
The first transfer was for $12,500.
The second was $18,000.
The third was the $40,000 I had just seen.
Seventy thousand five hundred dollars.
I whispered the number aloud.
Pam started crying again.
“I thought he was moving it temporarily.”
“To where?”
She didn’t answer.
“Pam.”
She looked at me.
“To a business account.”
“What business?”
Her face crumpled.
“Dale’s.”
I stood so quickly the chair scraped against the floor.
Mrs. Whitaker raised a hand.
“Mrs. Ellis—”
“He stole from Grandpa.”
Pam flinched.
“He said Grandpa agreed.”
“Did Grandpa sign anything?”
“I never saw anything.”
“Then why did you help him?”
“I didn’t help him.”
I pointed toward the sticky note photo on my phone.
“You were asking whether I could be excluded.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
Pam wiped her face.
“Because Dale told me the bonds were supposed to be part of the estate. He said Grandpa had forgotten about them.”
“But you knew my name was on them.”
“Yes.”
“And instead of calling me, you asked whether I could be excluded.”
She looked down.
That answer was enough.
I gathered the documents.
“I’m taking copies of everything.”
Mrs. Whitaker nodded.
“We’ll document what we can provide.”
Pam suddenly grabbed my wrist.
“Nancy, wait.”
I pulled away.
“There’s something else.”
I almost didn’t want to hear it.
“What?”
She opened the folder again and removed a folded sheet of paper.
It was a handwritten list.
Dates.
Amounts.
Initials.
Grandpa’s handwriting.
Beside one entry, he had written:
DALE SAYS LOAN.
NO PAPER.
ASK NANCY.
I stopped breathing for a second.
“He was going to ask me?”
Pam nodded.
“I found this in his desk after the funeral.”
“And you hid it?”
“I panicked.”
“Why?”
“Because Dale said if people started questioning the finances, the estate could get tied up for years.”
I laughed once, but there was nothing funny about it.
“So everyone protected the estate by hiding what happened to Grandpa’s money.”
“No.”
“That’s exactly what you did.”
Pam covered her face.
Then the bank lobby doors opened.
Dale walked in.
He didn’t look angry anymore.
He looked afraid.
He saw Pam sitting there and immediately noticed the folder.
“What did you give her?”
Pam stood.
“Everything I had.”
His face hardened.
“You idiot.”
Mrs. Whitaker stepped toward the door.
“Sir, I need you to leave this office.”
But Dale ignored her.
He pointed at Pam.
“You think Nancy is going to protect you when lawyers get involved?”
Pam started shaking.
“Stop threatening me.”
“I’m not threatening you.”
“Yes, you are.”
I stepped between them.
“Where did Grandpa’s money go?”
Dale looked at me.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“My business was failing.”
There it was.
No denial.
No confusion.
No explanation about some mistake.
His business.
“I borrowed it.”
“Did Grandpa agree?”
“He knew I needed help.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Dale’s jaw tightened.
“He would have helped me.”
I stared at him.
“Would have.”
He realized too late what he had said.
Pam whispered, “Oh my God.”
Mrs. Whitaker immediately wrote something on a notepad.
Dale looked toward her.
“Don’t twist my words.”
“Nobody is twisting anything,” I said.
He turned back to me.
“You think Grandpa loved you more because he hid some bonds with your name on them?”
“This isn’t about who he loved more.”
“Yes, it is. It always is with you.”
I almost laughed.
“With me?”
“You were always the victim, Nancy. The struggling single mother. The one Grandpa worried about.”
I stared at him.
“And you were the one taking his money.”
His face went red.
“I was going to put it back.”
“When?”
He didn’t answer.
“When, Dale?”
Silence.
That was when Alan appeared at the office door.
He had heard enough.
“I think you should stop talking,” he told Dale.
Dale spun around.
“Stay out of this.”
“No.”
Alan stepped inside.
“For once, I’m not staying out of it.”
Dale looked around the room and seemed to realize that nobody was standing beside him anymore.
Not Pam.
Not Alan.
Not me.
He backed toward the door.
“You people are making a huge mistake.”
Then he left.
The glass door slammed behind him.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Finally, Alan looked at me.
“I’m sorry.”
I wasn’t ready to accept that yet.
So I simply nodded.
Mrs. Whitaker helped us organize the documents and explained that some of what we had found needed to be reviewed by the bank’s legal and fraud departments.
Before I left, I opened Grandpa’s handwritten list one more time.
At the bottom, beneath the transfer notes, was another sentence I hadn’t noticed.
CHECK OLD SAFE BOX.
KEY WITH NANCY’S THINGS.
I stared at those words.
“What safe box?”
Alan leaned closer.
“I didn’t know Grandpa had one.”
Pam shook her head.
Neither did she.
But I suddenly remembered something.
Two months before Grandpa died, he had handed me a small coffee tin filled with old buttons, foreign coins, and broken keys.
I had put it in my garage without looking through it.
That afternoon, I drove home and dumped the contents onto my kitchen table.
Buttons rolled across the wood.
Coins clattered onto the floor.
Then one small brass key landed beside my hand.
A faded paper tag was tied around it with string.
On the tag, Grandpa had written three words.
FIRST FARMERS 214.
And underneath them:
NANCY ONLY…….
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 4…
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