Chapter 6 - Why Melissa Was Helping Him
Melissa’s involvement was easier to understand once investigators reviewed the companies.
She was not secretly running the whole scheme.
She had one role.
Accounting administration.
Melissa managed books for several small businesses owned by Christopher’s development group.
Her name appeared on vendor correspondence.
Payment schedules.
Invoice routing.
She knew the foundation contracts were connected to her brother.
She also knew Bertha had begun questioning them.
When Bertha died unexpectedly, Melissa came to the house within an hour.
She and Christopher searched the home office.
They found Bertha’s laptop.
Not the copied records.
They found the foundation folder.
Not the USB.
Then Melissa remembered seeing Bertha carry the navy skirt into the bedroom earlier that week.
She did not know the envelope was physically inside it.
But she suspected Bertha had hidden something outside the office.
That was why Melissa selected the funeral clothes herself.
She told the funeral home:
“Bertha had already laid these out for an important event. She loved the outfit.”
Technically true.
Then she and Christopher made a reckless calculation.
If the missing evidence was somewhere among Bertha’s belongings, cremating her quickly would eliminate any possibility that she had hidden it on her body or clothing.
They did not know for certain.
That uncertainty was exactly why Christopher became so aggressive when I approached the coffin.
He could not risk me discovering what he had failed to find.
Melissa’s slap came from the same panic.
Neither of them planned the chapel confrontation.
They simply lost control when the one person Christopher considered easiest to dismiss—a grieving sixty-two-year-old mother—would not step away.
They had underestimated two things.
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My profession had trained me to notice behavior around a body.
And my granddaughter had been listening.
