Mark: Stand right where you are, Vanessa! Don't you dare touch that door handle!
Vanessa: Mark, she’s confused! She’s suffering from dementia! She sneaked into the house while the contractors were working!
Eleanor: I don't have dementia, Mark... I came to give you your father's original trust fund papers...
Mark: What trust fund papers?
Eleanor: The ones she tried to burn. The estate papers for the family business in Austin.
My mind raced back to three weeks ago. My father had passed away last year, leaving a multi-million-dollar real estate trust fund behind. Vanessa had insisted that the trust was legally tied up in probate and that she was the primary executor named in the final amendment.
Mark: Vanessa, what did you do?
Vanessa: Your mother was trying to cut me out of the mortgage settlement! She wanted to bankrupt us! I did it for our family!
Mark: You sealed a seventy-year-old woman inside a wall for money?!
Vanessa: I gave her food! I left bottles of water through the top vent! I wasn't going to let her die, Mark! I just needed her to sign the power of attorney forms!
Lily: Bad lady! Daddy, she made Grandmama cry!
Mark: You fed her through a vent like an animal?
Vanessa: The estate is worth six million dollars, Mark! Do you know what we can do with six million dollars? We could pay off the house, buy the condo in Miami, set up Lily's college fund!
Mark: You are sick.
Vanessa: Think about your future! If she goes to the police, I go to prison, and you lose everything! The bank will freeze the estate accounts!
Eleanor: Mark... the papers... in her purse...
I stood up, stepping over the piles of shattered drywall. Vanessa took two quick steps back, her heels digging into the rug, but I reached out and snatched her leather designer handbag right off her arm.
Vanessa: Give that back to me! That’s personal property!
Mark: Let’s see what’s inside.
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