Part 3 — The Listed Daughter
The detective cleared his throat. The phone on my account was registered to a woman named Tiffany Dunn, twenty-six, of Bradenton. On her application she had named her mother as Arlene Whitcomb. My name, my address, and my late husbands birthday for the security question.
I had never met Tiffany Dunn in my life. She had typed my information into a phone company form because the driver had copied it off my wallet and my paperwork while I slept in the back seat.
The driver was her boyfriend, Corey Vance. He signed up for the ride app under a false name, picked up older women who rode alone on set days, and kept notes on their routines. The detective said I was one of four women in the county he had been tracking since June.
Hectors friend at the lab identified what was in the bottle. It was a common over-the-counter sleep aid, ground fine and dissolved. It would have left me drowsy for an hour and no worse. Corey chose it because it would not look dangerous to anyone who asked.
That did not make it harmless, and the detective treated it as the crime it was. The bottle cap with its tiny hole and its dot of glue became the center of the case.
They arrested Corey on a Friday, in his car outside a salon on Bee Ridge Road, with another womans water bottle in the cup holder. He had two more phones in the glove box and a list of bank routing numbers. Tiffany was picked up that afternoon at her apartment.
Both were charged with fraud, identity theft, and exploitation of an elderly person. The bank had saved a log of every login, so there was little to argue about. A pinhole in a plastic cap undid the whole scheme, and I found it only because I refused to drink.
My daughter flew to Sarasota the next morning. She cried in my kitchen for a long time and said she was sorry for telling me I was paranoid. I told her I would have said the same about me. It was a hard conversation and a good one, and we are closer now.
The bank restored the $11,400 plus fees, and removed the extra card and the P.O. box. The phone company flagged my name so no one could open another account with it.
The ride company apologized in writing, rebuilt its driver checks, and gave me a year of free rides with a driver of my choosing. I chose a retired schoolteacher named Mr. Bell, who brings a thermos of coffee for himself and never offers me anything.
Hector came by with a pie, and the two of us sat on the dock behind my condo and watched the boats. I told him he had saved me with one look at a cap. He laughed and said I had saved myself.
