Chapter 15 - The House on Harding Road
Vanessa had left the Mitchell estate through a kitchen door without her phone.
For thirty-six hours, nobody knew where she was.
Then Daniel Morales called me.
"Mrs. Carter, I think she's at my aunt's house."
I almost dropped the phone.
Daniel's aunt worked as a housekeeper for Patricia years earlier. Vanessa had once helped her after a car accident.
"Why would Vanessa trust her?"
"Because my aunt was kind to her when her parents weren't."
Federal agents went to Harding Road.
Vanessa came out voluntarily.
She had a swollen cheek and no makeup.
The woman who had sprayed me on the lawn looked younger without the armor.
She asked to speak with me.
Ethan said I owed her nothing.
He was right.
I went anyway.
Vanessa sat across from me in a small interview room.
"I'm sorry," she said.
I waited.
"Not because you're rich. Not because you're Ethan's mother. I mean what I did before I knew any of that."
"Why did you do it?"
She looked at her hands.
"Because I thought being above someone meant I was safe from becoming them."
That was the first honest thing she had said to me.
She admitted Patricia recognized me and told her I was a hostile banker trying to wreck George's company.
"I wanted Mom to think I could handle you."
"So you humiliated me."
"Yes."
"And the waiter?"
Her eyes filled.
"That was me too."
She did not blame her father for that.
Good.
Then she gave investigators something bigger.
A safe-deposit key.
"Dad keeps the original land appraisals there."
She looked at me.
"And a list of everyone he paid."
I asked, "Is Martin on it?"
"Yes."
May you like
She swallowed.
"But so is someone you still trust.
