Marcus's Full Plan
Chapter 10 - Marcus's Full Plan
Detective Castillo's interrogation of Marcus Webb, conducted the following morning, revealed a considerably more extensive and calculated scheme than the initial kidnapping charges alone suggested.
"The estate is worth approximately four point two million dollars," Marcus told investigators, once his attorney had advised full cooperation in exchange for consideration on the most serious charges. "I've been diverting approximately eighty thousand dollars per year for the past seven years, routed through consulting fees, maintenance invoices, and vendor payments for services that were never actually rendered."
"Diana Ashworth's involvement," Castillo asked.
"She signed whatever I put in front of her," Marcus said, "as long as the monthly payments I gave her continued. I don't believe she ever fully understood the scope of what I was actually doing. She understood enough to be useful, though, which is all I needed."
"And the kidnapping," Castillo pressed. "How did that escalate from financial fraud into holding a seventy-year-old woman captive for nineteen days."
"Eleanor found the records," Marcus said. "Despite my considerable efforts to keep them buried in the estate's more complex filings. She confronted me, told me she'd changed her will to remove Diana entirely and redirect everything to Sophie, and informed me she intended to file a formal complaint with the state's elder abuse hotline within the week."
"So you took her before she could report you," Castillo said.
"I needed time," Marcus admitted. "Time to construct documentation that would make the transfers appear legitimate, time to convince Eleanor, under duress, to sign a new power of attorney that would give me continued access regardless of her will's changes."
"Did she sign anything," Castillo asked.
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"No," Marcus said, something that looked almost like grudging respect crossing his face. "Nineteen days, and she refused every single time. She told me, repeatedly, that she would rather die in that room than sign a document under duress. I believed her, eventually."
Castillo relayed this detail to Sophie later that day, and Sophie felt a specific, fierce pride in her grandmother's stubbornness, understanding now exactly how much strength Eleanor had carried, alone, across nineteen days of captivity, refusing to yield despite having every reason to believe nobody was ever coming to find her.
