Chapter 15 - The Man With the Keys
I called Owen to the house and placed the work order on the desk. He barely glanced at it before saying the pool alarm had been disabled for maintenance. When I asked why no technician had signed off on the repair, he said the vendor had made a mistake in the paperwork.
"And the camera cable?" I asked.
His expression changed for less than a second. "I don't handle the camera feeds."
"You handle the security contractors."
"I handle a great deal of things, Mr. Mercer. I can't remember every cable."
I told him he was suspended until the review was complete. He stood, smoothing his jacket, and gave me a look I had never seen from him before: not respect, but calculation.
"You should be careful," he said. "You have a grieving child, a volatile instructor, and a fiancée who has done nothing but help you. You are about to destroy your own household because you cannot accept that your daughter had an accident."
"If it was an accident, the evidence will show it."
Owen left without another word. An hour later, the estate's main account received a transfer request for $480,000 to Rosebridge Consulting. The approval code had been generated from my laptop.
I froze the transaction and called Ben. He asked me to check the device history. The login had come from the guest room, where Celeste had stayed while planning the charity dinner.
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That was the moment I understood Owen wasn't acting alone.
Owen had been at my side through probate, the funeral, and every meeting where I was too tired to read the fine print. That history made the betrayal harder to accept. He knew the house well enough to understand that a missing camera feed was not a technical problem; it was a message to anyone who might look.
