When Richard Hillman's business interests started to go badly wrong, he tried to hide the extent of his troubles from Gail and the family. Having sold his beloved expensive people carrier he told them that it had been stolen, only for mother-in-law Audrey Roberts to spot the vehicle in the dealership which had bought the car.
Audrey and Gail insisted on accompanying a worried Richard when he went to the garage the next day where he was relieved to find that the vehicle had gone. He insisted on speaking with salesman Tom Price alone and pretended to him to be interested in buying a similar vehicle. Watching at a distance, Audrey and Gail were none the wiser and Richard told them as they left that the vehicle that had been seen was similar but with a one digit difference on its registration plate. As a bonus, Audrey took this as proof of her oncoming senility, something that Richard wanted to encourage as part of his plan to kill her in a house fire which she would have supposedly started herself and then cash in her insurance policy and thus end his financial problems.