Chapter 2 - What Victoria Was Looking For
I knelt beside Lily while two security officers waited at the doorway.
“What did she think was inside the music box?” I asked.
Lily wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “A key.”
Victoria laughed once, too quickly. “This is absurd.”
I turned toward her. “Don’t speak to her.”
Her jaw tightened.
Lily pointed at the broken base. A square of faded velvet had peeled away from the wood, exposing a shallow hidden compartment.
Empty.
I had owned that music box for seven years and never known the compartment existed.
Victoria stared at it.
That stare told me more than her denial.
“Where’s the key?” I asked.
“There is no key.”
“Then why were you searching for one?”
“I wasn’t.”
Lily pressed closer to my side. “She asked me where Mommy hid it.”
My late wife, Claire, had died four years earlier after a sudden aneurysm. Lily remembered her mostly through photographs, bedtime videos, and that music box.
Victoria knew how sacred those things were.
One of the security officers, Daniel Reeves, stepped forward. “Mr. Hale, police are at the gate.”
Victoria straightened. “You’re really doing this?”
“You scared my daughter, destroyed her property, and threatened to remove her from her home.”
“You have no idea what you’re throwing away.”
I looked at Lily’s trembling fingers.
“I know exactly what I’m protecting.”
Police escorted Victoria to a guest room while they took statements. She wasn’t arrested that night; the officers said the footage and Lily’s statement would determine the next step. But I had her access card canceled and her bags packed under supervision.
After midnight, when the house was finally quiet, Daniel brought me a tablet.
“The library footage is intact,” he said. “But there’s something else.”
He showed me the security log.
The library camera had been manually disabled three times that week.
May you like
Each time, Victoria’s access code had been used.
And one of those times was at 2:14 in the morning.
