“No, the money we put aside for Melinda. She had a trust fund. We had put in over a half-million dollars for her. It was for big things—a house, education, savings. Money that she might need as an adult, not money for the tables in Vegas.”

“Of course,” Marge said. “When was she to get the money?”

“It was in two stages. Half when she was twenty-five and half when she was thirty. But we could see the writing on the wall. It wasn’t going to work.” She lowered her head. “The trust provided us with a onetime spendthrift clause just for these kinds of problems. The clause meant we could take back the money from the trust and put it in our account at any time.”

“I see where this is leading,” Oliver said.

“She was furious. She threatened never to talk to us and that we’d never see our future grandchildren.” Delia’s eyes welled up with tears. “It was a terrible scene! Thank God for Ben.”

“What happened?”

Delia swallowed back a sob. “He offered us an alternative. We would give Melinda the money, but Ben would have full power to manage it.”

Marge said, “And you didn’t have a problem with having your son-in-law in charge of the money?”

“Whatever he’d do, it had to be better than what Melinda would have done. He promised to spend the money on things for the family—education for their future children; the boys weren’t born yet. He said he’d use it for a life insurance policy and the occasional toy for the family like a boat or a car. He’d buy her jewelry so she felt like she would have something of her own. He promised that he’d manage her money and we could rest assured that it would be put to good use.”

“And Melinda agreed to that?”

“It was either that or no money at all.”

“So she agreed?”

“We had her put it in writing.” She looked away and sighed. “And Ben, God bless him, kept his word. He consulted us with every purchase, even though he didn’t have to. It was our idea to use it for the Mercedes. We wanted to reward him.”

She hung her head.

“No one counted on him dying. Once he was gone, she ripped through all of it: their savings, her jewelry, the boat, the motor home, the cars, and his life insurance. It was just damn lucky that she couldn’t touch the boys’ educational funds. She gave me this cock-and-bull story about hiring a private detective and that’s where all the money went. For what she went through, she could have hired all of Pinkerton. It was so obvious, it was pathetic.”

Marge said, “Maybe she was trying to save face.”