Chapter 8 - The Woman in the Camera.
Detective Ortiz refused to assume the photograph proved anything.
Victor did not share her restraint.
He called Beatrice twelve times.
She answered on the thirteenth.
"You always were impatient," she said.
"Someone planted a camera in Elena's room."
"How vulgar."
"Your photograph was beside it."
A pause followed.
"Then someone wants you to suspect me."
"Should I?"
"You already do."
Victor stared across the living room at Nino sitting beside Elena on the rug.
The boy was building a tower from wooden blocks, calmer than Victor had seen him in months.
"Did you poison Claire?"
Beatrice's voice became flat.
"No."
"Did you know she was being drugged?"
Another pause.
"Ask Miles."
The call ended.
Victor turned immediately toward Detective Ortiz.
Miles Arden had left the penthouse hours earlier.
By the time police reached his apartment, he was gone.
His phone had been abandoned in a taxi.
His passport showed no recent travel.
His office safe was open and empty.
Then Victor remembered the handwritten ledger rescued from the fire.
He opened it on the kitchen island.
The pages listed dates, initials, and payments.
Most meant nothing.
One set of initials appeared repeatedly.
M.A.
Beside the final payment, Claire had written one sentence.
"He says B knows, but he is more afraid of V."
Victor read it twice.
"V could be me."
Elena shook her head.
"Claire would have written your name."
"Then who is V?"
Nino suddenly looked up.
"Vee man."
Victor went still.
"What man?"
Nino pointed toward the hall leading to the staff rooms.
"Vee man come night."
Elena's expression changed.
"Did you see him after Mommy went to sleep?"
Nino nodded.
"Grandma door."
Victor knelt beside him.
"What did he look like?"
Nino frowned with the effort of memory.
Then he touched his own cheek.
"Cut here."
A scar.
Victor knew a man with a scar along his cheek.
Vincent Crowe.
Hale Meridian's former head of corporate security.
Victor had fired him five years ago after a bribery investigation.
Beatrice had quietly rehired him as a private consultant.
Victor called building security.
Crowe's face was run through archived access logs.
A match appeared within minutes.
He had entered the building twice during the week Claire died using a contractor badge.
He had entered again that morning.
The masked intruder was almost certainly Crowe.
Victor felt a surge of certainty.
Then Detective Ortiz held up one hand.
"There is more."
Crowe had not entered alone nine months ago.
The camera showed a second person beside him.
The image was grainy, but the face was recognizable.
It was Claire.
Victor stared at the screen.
"Why would my wife meet him?"
Elena whispered, "Maybe she wasn't only hiding from your mother."
The second recorder from the metal box suddenly made sense.
Victor pressed play.
Claire's voice came first.
Then Crowe's.
"You have until Friday," he said.
Claire answered, "If Victor learns Nino isn't his biological son, Beatrice will destroy all of us."
Victor reviewed the security roster himself and discovered three master access codes had been duplicated during a software upgrade.
One belonged to a housekeeping supervisor who had been on vacation for two weeks.
Another belonged to Beatrice's longtime assistant.
May you like
The third belonged to Victor.
Every path seemed to circle back toward his own family and his own carelessness.
