Chapter 4 - The Missing Originals
The ambulance took Eleanor and Grace to St. David's Medical Center.
I sent our security director, Miles Trent, with them and stayed behind for exactly six minutes.
That was how long it took me to discover the writing desk had been searched.
The drawer beneath the one holding the blue folder was open.
My mother had said she still had the originals.
Vanessa stood in the doorway with her coat over one arm.
"If you're about to accuse me of stealing papers from your mother's room, choose your words carefully."
"Where are they?"
"I don't know."
"You knew about the transfer to Grace."
"Eleanor waved the draft in my face this morning. She called me a parasite and said she was fixing an old mistake before you married into mine."
"And then you threw soup at a woman recovering from heart surgery?"
Vanessa's eyes flashed. "I did not throw it."
"Grace is burned because she covered my mother."
"Grace staged it."
Eighteen months of dinners, flights, quiet mornings, board galas, and wedding plans stood between us like scenery from someone else's life.
"Give me your phone."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me."
She laughed. "Absolutely not."
I called Miles.
"Lock down the house. Nobody deletes security footage. Nobody leaves with a device that hasn't been logged."
Vanessa's face sharpened.
"You cannot detain me in your house."
"I'm not. You're free to leave. Your phone is free to stay if you want my security team to preserve it voluntarily. Otherwise my lawyers will handle the next step."
"You are going to destroy us over a maid's sob story."
"Housekeeper," I said. "Her name is Grace."
Vanessa's expression turned ugly.
"You always did have a weakness for strays."
"Get out."
She did.
"Adrienne, I checked the bedroom cameras. We have a problem."
"What problem?"
"The camera covering your mother's suite was disabled twenty-two minutes before you got home."
I closed my eyes.
"By whom?"
"That's what you need to see. The shutdown used your personal administrator credentials."
May you like
I hadn't been home all afternoon.
Someone had used my identity to blind my own house.
