Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Florida
By 8:00 AM, the rain had stopped, leaving the streets of Charleston steaming under a pale, humid sun.
I sat at the small kitchen table in my house, the blinds pulled to keep out the glare. Lily was asleep in the guest bedroom down the hall, her arm in a fresh, plaster cast, her breathing deep and even for the first time in months. Neil had given her a mild, safe sleep aid to help clear the Nordiazepam from her system.
My kitchen table was covered in manila folders, printouts, and old legal documents.
I had spent the last four hours on the phone with old contacts from my private investigation days—retired cops, court clerks, and researchers who owed me favors. I didn't look for Natalie Croft. I looked for the women she used to be.
People like Natalie don't start their careers at thirty-eight in a wealthy Charleston suburb. They have pasts. They have trial runs. They have bodies of work left behind in other states, buried under changed names and sealed records.
It took me three hours to find her first name change.
In 2018, Natalie Croft was Natalie Mercer. In 2014, she was Natalie Dubois.
I traced her back to a small, affluent coastal town near Sarasota, Florida.
I dialed a number I hadn't called in seven years. It rang five times before a gravelly, cigarette-ruined voice answered.
“Yeah?”
“Marcus,” I said. “It’s Gerald Oakes.”
There was a long silence on the other end. I heard the scrape of a lighter, a deep drag, and then a long exhale. “Gerald. I thought you died or retired to a swamp somewhere.”
“Not yet,” I said. “I need a favor, Marcus. You were a detective in Sarasota back in 2016. I need to know about a woman named Natalie Dubois. Married to a man named Arthur Dubois. He died in 2017.”
Another silence. This one was cold.
“Why are you asking about that black widow, Gerald?” Marcus asked, his voice losing its casual tone. “What did she do?”
“She married my son ten months ago,” I said. “And three hours ago, my granddaughter came into the ER with a broken wrist, old rib fractures, and benzos in her blood.”
I heard Marcus curse softly under his breath. “Jesus Christ, Gerald. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. We tried to nail her. God knows we tried.”
“Tell me,” I said, opening my notebook and picking up a pen.
“Arthur Dubois was a wealthy developer,” Marcus said, the words coming fast now. “Fifty-five, retired, worth about four million. Natalie was thirty-one when she met him. Within a year, they were married. Within eighteen months, Arthur’s health started failing. Memory issues, coordination problems, 'accidental' falls. He had a teenage daughter from his first marriage, Clara.”
My hand froze over the page. “What happened to Clara?”
“She started acting out,” Marcus said, his voice bitter. “Or so Natalie said. Natalie claimed the girl was unstable, depressed, self-harming. Clara tried to tell her school counselor that Natalie was drugging her father and beating her when Arthur wasn't looking. But Natalie had already laid the groundwork. She had Clara diagnosed by a friendly private therapist she paid under the table. They put Clara on sedatives. One night, Clara 'accidentally' fell from a second-story balcony. She survived, but she suffered severe brain damage. She was committed to a private care facility, deemed incompetent.”
I felt a cold sweat break out on the back of my neck. “And Arthur?”
“Died six months later,” Marcus said. “Supposedly of a stroke. But we suspected heavy metal poisoning or a slow overdose of prescription meds. The problem was, Arthur had signed over full power of attorney to Natalie six weeks before he died. He had changed his will, disinheriting Clara due to her 'mental instability' and leaving everything to Natalie. We couldn't prove the poisoning because she had him cremated forty-eight hours after he died. By the time we got the warrants, the evidence was ash.”
“How did she get away with it?” I asked, my grip on the pen so tight the plastic was groaning.
“She’s clean, Gerald. She doesn't leave a paper trail. She uses private doctors who don't want to lose their licenses, she pays cash, and she finds weak men who are too lonely or too stupid to believe they’re being played until they’re already underwater. Your son... what’s his financial situation?”
I leaned back in my chair, looking out the window at the moss-draped oak trees. “Thomas inherited his mother’s family estate. The land alone is worth three million. And Lily... Lily has a trust fund from her mother’s family that activates when she turns sixteen. It’s worth two million. It’s sitting in a bank downtown, waiting for her next birthday.”
“Which is when?”
“Three months,” I whispered.
“Then your son is already dying, Gerald,” Marcus said quietly. “And your granddaughter was next on the list. If Lily is declared mentally unstable or suffers a 'tragic accident,' the trust reverts to the father. And if the father dies shortly after... Natalie gets it all.”
“She’s not going to get a dime,” I said.
“Be careful, Gerald,” Marcus warned. “She’s smart. She knows the law. She knows how to make herself look like the victim. If you go after her with dry powder, she’ll slip right through your fingers again.”
“I don’t use dry powder, Marcus,” I said. “I use fire.”
I hung up the phone. I sat in the quiet kitchen for a long time, watching the sunlight move slowly across the wooden floorboards.
May you like
Then, I went to my closet and pulled out a dusty, black leather case. Inside was an old, professional-grade surveillance kit—miniature cameras, high-frequency audio bugs, and a GPS tracker no larger than a coin.
I hadn't used them in years. But some skills never leave you. They just sleep, waiting for the right kind of monster to wake them up.
