Chapter 8 - THE NIGHT SOMEONE ENTERED OAKRIDGE
At two seventeen in the morning, the security system at Oakridge sent an intrusion alarm.
Jonathan and I were awake before the second alert.
I checked Emma's room first.
She was asleep, her sling resting against the blanket.
Then I called the monitoring service.
A camera showed a person in a maintenance jacket entering the corridor outside Oakridge's records room.
The person carried a key card.
The card belonged to an employee who had resigned six months earlier.
Police arrived and found the records-room door damaged.
No one was inside.
The visitor had taken a removable backup drive but missed the sealed archival copy stored offsite.
Rachel instructed us not to speculate publicly about who had ordered it.
"The break-in is a separate investigation," she reminded me.
But the timing was impossible to ignore.
The next day I told my staff everything they needed to know about the incident without dragging Emma into a workplace drama.
Our technology director secured account access and preserved access logs.
By lunch, a former Caldwell & Price paralegal called Rachel.
Her name was Nina Brooks.
She said Charles had asked her to prepare backdated authorization packets.
"I refused," she said.
"Then my position was eliminated."
She had retained emails through lawful personal correspondence that identified the disputed instructions.
Rachel advised her to seek independent representation and preserve the material.
Later, Margaret left a voicemail at my office.
"A decent daughter would come home and discuss this privately."
I listened until she began criticizing Emma.
Then I stopped the recording.
I had mistaken proximity for obligation for too many years.
That afternoon the police recovered the stolen drive from a dumpster near the riverfront.
It had been wiped.
A detective told us a person matching the intruder's clothing had been seen entering a car registered to a contractor used by the estate.
It was suggestive, not conclusive.
I refused to jump ahead of the evidence.
At bedtime Emma asked if we had to eat Easter dinner at Grandma's next year.
"No," I told her.
She smiled for the first time in days.
"Can we have it here?"
"Every year, if that's what you want."
A little later, Rachel sent me a scan of my father's handwritten letter.
Agnes had located a photographic copy in an old inventory file.
The first line read, "Caroline, the house was never meant to cost you your life."
May you like
The next page was missing.
