“He used Molly’s voice to steal from you,” Derek said.
“The police have him now.”
“They haven’t told me that.”
“They don’t tell victims everything.”
Gloria looked at the daisies.
“Why would Jonah send me a message telling me to attack Evan?”
“Because he wanted to make it look like I was involved.”
She thought about the yellow folder, the loan application, and the accounts she could no longer access without assistance.
“Then why did you tell me Evan had Molly?”
Derek’s face changed.
“Because I believed the recording.”
“You said a neighbor saw her.”
“I was repeating what somebody told me.”
“Which neighbor?”
He reached for his coffee.
“Why are you interrogating me?”
“Because I hurt a man, and I need to know why.”
His voice turned cold.
“Don’t let Marian make you suspicious of your own family.”
Gloria pushed her chair back.
“I’m not suspicious because of Marian.
I’m suspicious because I can’t find one person who saw what you said they saw.”
Derek stood so abruptly that the chair legs scraped the floor.
“You’re choosing strangers over your son.”
Gloria’s eyes filled with tears.
“I’m choosing to ask a question.”
He left without taking the sandwiches.
Ten minutes later a message arrived on her phone from a number she didn’t recognize.
The voice sounded like Molly again.
“Grandma, Dad is trying to help.
Please stop making things worse.”
Gloria did not play it twice.
She called Rachel Soto and said she had received another suspected fake recording.
Then she set the phone on the kitchen table and waited for help.
Detective Ward later told me that Gloria’s quick report was crucial.
The newest message preserved transmission information that earlier recordings lacked.
It had been sent through a service that investigators could approach with lawful process.
The service records did not name the sender immediately, but they established a pattern of access and billing that could be compared with other evidence.
The technical work was slow.
No one found a magical number that revealed a culprit in one afternoon.
Investigators requested records, waited for responses, corrected mistakes, and sometimes found that a lead pointed nowhere.
The process frustrated everybody.
It also protected innocent people from being accused because of similarities that sounded dramatic but meant little.
One of those dead ends involved a volunteer at the library named Sandra Pike.
Sandra had helped organize Molly’s podcast workshop and had accessed the public recordings on multiple occasions.
An online rumor claimed she had sold the files to a voice-cloning company.
