Chapter 10 - THE WOMAN NAMED KIMBERLY
Kimberly Voss appeared in the financial records thirty-seven times.
Nathan had described her as a bookkeeper.
She was not.
She managed a luxury apartment complex outside Philadelphia.
She had been dating Nathan for eleven months.
She also believed Nathan was divorced.
“He told me Emily left him years ago,” Kimberly said when investigators contacted her.
“She died two years ago.”
Kimberly went pale.
“I know that now.”
Nathan had built different lives for different people.
To Lila, he was the exhausted widower doing everything alone.
To Kimberly, he was a successful contractor waiting for a complicated estate issue to be settled.
To Jenna, he was a grieving brother-in-law who became hostile only when questioned.
To creditors, he was temporarily cash-poor.
To the bank, he was acting as trustee for his daughter.
Kimberly produced transaction records voluntarily.
The largest payment Nathan sent her was $14,800.
“What was it for?”
“He said it was for a deposit on a house.”
“Did you buy one?”
“No.”
“Where did the money go?”
“I returned most of it after we argued.”
Investigators verified that she had.
Nathan had then withdrawn the returned money in cash.
Part of it was inside the box taped to Lila.
But Kimberly provided something more important.
Three months earlier, Nathan told her he wanted to move to South Carolina.
He showed her houses.
Talked about starting over.
Said Pennsylvania had “too much baggage.”
“Was Lila going with him?”
Kimberly hesitated.
“He said she didn’t have a choice.”
That sentence reached Jenna several days later.
She sat in her attorney’s office listening.
“He was going to take her.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“We believe the day she collapsed.”
Jenna looked toward the window.
Nathan’s truck had contained clothes.
Lila’s passport had been missing from the house.
School records showed Nathan had requested copies of Lila’s immunization history one week earlier.
He had also withdrawn her from the after-school program effective that Friday.
Nothing alone proved anything.
Together, they drew a line.
Nathan expected Jenna’s financial challenge to expose him.
He planned to leave Pennsylvania with Lila before the trust accounts were fully examined.
The box was supposed to stay hidden until pickup.
One ordinary Tuesday.
May you like
One ordinary cardigan.
One seven-year-old girl carrying the evidence of her own father’s betrayal against her ribs.
