Chapter 6 - THE EMPTY STROLLER PLAN
Adrian's face emptied of color.
"What did you just say?"
Vanessa grabbed the back of a chair.
"I was trying to prove someone was stealing from the house."
Maria stared at her.
"By pushing a stroller into a pool?"
Vanessa explained badly and quickly.
She claimed expensive baby items had gone missing.
She believed Maria was taking them.
So she planned a "test."
An empty stroller would be left by the pool with a tracker hidden inside. Vanessa would move it after midnight, then accuse Maria of sneaking outside.
"That makes no sense," Ramon said.
Vanessa shouted, "I panicked when I realized Oliver was inside!"
Maria stepped forward.
"You looked into that stroller before you pushed it."
Vanessa glared at her.
"You were thirty feet away in the dark."
"I heard him fuss."
Adrian looked down at Oliver.
His voice shook.
"Who put him in the stroller?"
Vanessa said, "I don't know."
That was the new mystery.
The nursery camera showed Oliver asleep in his crib at 11:42 p.m.
At 11:49, the feed cut out.
At 12:03, it returned.
The crib was empty.
Someone had carried the baby downstairs during the missing fourteen minutes.
Adrian looked at Maria.
She had been in the laundry room from 11:35 until 12:08, confirmed by another camera.
Ramon had been at the gate.
Vanessa claimed she had been showering.
Then Adrian checked the hallway camera.
At 11:51, a figure crossed the far end of the corridor carrying something white.
The face was hidden.
But the person wore a distinctive bracelet.
Maria knew that bracelet.
She had fastened it around Vanessa's wrist before dinner.
Adrian paused the frame.
"You said you were in the shower."
Vanessa stared at the screen.
Then she whispered, "That isn't me."
And from behind them, Vanessa's sister Claire said,
"She's right."
Everyone turned.
May you like
Claire held up her own wrist.
She was wearing the same bracelet.
