Chapter 9 - Evelyn Shaw
I called Evelyn from the hospital hallway.
She answered warmly.
"Amelia, I heard there was a disturbance at the gala. Are you all right?"
"I fell."
"How awful."
"Did you know I was working as a server tonight?"
"Of course not. Why would I?"
I looked at Daniel.
"Where are you?"
"Home."
"Stay there."
"Is that a request?"
"Yes."
"Then I decline."
"I'm sending Brooks."
We returned to the mansion just after midnight.
Most guests had been released after giving contact information.
The ballroom looked like a crime scene wearing flowers.
Vanessa sat alone near the fountain.
"You came back," she said.
"So did you."
"Dad told me to leave."
"You usually do what he says?"
"More than I realized."
Not convincingly at first.
But when she said Lily's name without calling her "the coat girl," I listened.
"I humiliated people because I knew nobody would stop me," she said. "That's not an excuse."
"No. It isn't."
"Will you sue me?"
"Maybe. That's not the question you should be worried about tonight."
I asked whether Evelyn Shaw knew her family.
Vanessa nodded.
"She comes to my father's office."
"How often?"
"Every few weeks."
Then Vanessa remembered something.
At dinner two months earlier, she had heard Evelyn tell Grant, "Once the reserve drops, Amelia won't have a choice."
Vanessa had assumed they were discussing a merger.
They were discussing me.
Daniel returned with another problem.
Evelyn was not at home.
Her phone was off.
But her housekeeper gave police a sealed envelope she had been told to deliver if "anything went wrong at Lakeshore."
It was addressed to me.
Inside was one page.
AMELIA,
IF YOU ARE READING THIS, GRANT MOVED TOO SOON.
YOUR FATHER WARNED ME YOU WOULD EVENTUALLY LOOK AT THE SERVICE CONTRACTS.
HE WAS RIGHT.
I stopped reading.
May you like
My father had been dead eighteen months.
And according to Evelyn's letter, he had known about all of this before I did.
