Chapter 5 - COME ALONE
I read the message three times before anyone noticed my face.
Gabriel saw it first.
"What happened?"
I turned the phone over in my hand.
"Nothing."
He stared at me.
"You are terrible at lying."
Detective Kim looked up from Charles's phone.
"Ms. Bennett?"
I could have shown them the photograph immediately.
I should have shown them the photograph immediately.
Instead, I heard my mother's voice in my head.
Do not hand your truth to people who have already chosen what they want to believe.
She used to say that whenever a landlord accused us of something we had not done or a manager blamed her for someone else's mistake.
At the time, I thought she was talking about ordinary cruelty.
Now I understood that my mother had spent decades practicing survival.
"I need some air."
Kim blocked the stairs.
"Nobody leaves the room until we finish documenting it."
"Then I need the bathroom."
She studied me.
I kept my face neutral.
Finally, she stepped aside.
"Officer outside the door."
"Fine."
Gabriel watched me climb the narrow stairs.
I could feel his suspicion following me all the way to the corridor.
The officer walked me to the nearest guest bathroom and waited outside.
I locked the door.
My hands were shaking now.
I opened the blocked message again.
Charles sat against rough wooden boards.
A single bare bulb hung behind him.
The cassette in his hand had a white label.
Even through the grainy image, I could see a date written in black ink.
OCTOBER 17.
The missing tape.
Another message arrived.
OLD BOATHOUSE.
TEN MINUTES.
NO GABRIEL.
NO POLICE.
Then a third.
ASK ELEANOR WHAT ANNA DID AFTER JONATHAN DIED.
I stared at those words until my reflection in the mirror stopped looking like my own face.
My mother had spent my entire childhood telling me Jonathan Ashford was a stranger.
She had never spoken his name.
She had never described the estate.
She had never told me about the locket, the trust, the room, or the accusation of theft.
Now someone was suggesting she had hidden something even after Jonathan died.
I slipped the phone into Gabriel's jacket pocket.
Then I opened the bathroom window.
The rain had slowed to a cold drizzle.
The drop to the ground was only six feet.
I climbed onto the sill.
For one second, I pictured the expression Detective Kim would make when the officer realized I had disappeared.
Then I jumped.
I landed badly, rolled across wet grass, and felt pain shoot through my ankle.
I stood anyway.
The boathouse lay at the bottom of the east lawn beyond a line of cedar trees.
I knew because I had seen it from the kitchen earlier that evening.
I ran through the rain.
Mud splashed the hem of my uniform.
Gabriel's jacket dragged heavily around my shoulders.
By the time I reached the trees, my lungs were burning.
The old boathouse stood beside a black lake.
Its roof sagged in the middle.
One window glowed yellow.
I slowed.
This was stupid.
I knew it was stupid.
But fear had never given my mother the luxury of perfect decisions.
I pushed the door open.
"Charles?"
The smell hit me first.
Oil.
Wet wood.
Old rope.
Then I saw the chair from the photograph.
It was empty.
A dark stain marked the seat.
The cassette tape rested on the floor beneath it.
I stepped inside.
"Charles?"
The door slammed behind me.
I turned.
A bolt dropped from the outside.
I ran back and hit the door with both hands.
"Open it."
No answer.
"I said open it."
Footsteps moved away across the gravel.
I grabbed the iron handle and pulled until my palms burned.
The door did not move.
Then I smelled gasoline.
My blood turned cold.
A thin line of liquid crept beneath the opposite wall.
I looked toward the cassette.
Next to it was a small battery-powered recorder.
A red light blinked.
I pressed play.
Charles's voice filled the room.
"If you are hearing this, I am either dead or Victoria has finally decided I know too much."
I stopped breathing.
"Lena Bennett, I am sorry."
He knew my name.
"I helped your mother disappear."
The words seemed to change the air around me.
"I also helped Victoria make it look as if Anna had stolen from the family."
My hand tightened around the recorder.
"At the time, I told myself I was protecting Gabriel."
Charles laughed bitterly on the recording.
"That is what cowards call greed when they need to sleep at night."
Outside, something scraped against wood.
I looked toward the wall.
The gasoline smell grew stronger.
Charles continued.
"Jonathan planned to leave Victoria."
"He planned to acknowledge you publicly."
"He also planned to remove me from the board because he discovered I had been moving money through shell companies."
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The motive that tied everyone together.
Love, money, inheritance, shame.
Nothing in the Ashford family existed alone.
"Victoria offered me a deal."
Charles's recorded voice dropped.
"Help her discredit Anna, and she would protect me from Jonathan."
"I agreed."
I heard my own breathing over the recorder.
"But I did not damage the plane."
A pause.
"I need you to believe that."
The gasoline reached the center of the floor.
I searched for another exit.
The window was nailed shut.
A trapdoor near the lake side was chained.
I grabbed an old oar and smashed it against the window.
The first strike cracked the glass.
The second shattered it.
Cold air rushed in.
Then a flash of orange appeared beneath the far wall.
Fire crawled across the gasoline.
I climbed onto a workbench and kicked at the broken window frame.
The opening was too narrow.
Flames spread behind me.
Smoke rolled toward the ceiling.
I wrapped Gabriel's jacket around my forearm and punched out the remaining glass.
The wool protected me from most of the shards.
I squeezed through the opening just as the workbench caught fire.
My hip scraped against the frame.
I fell into wet grass outside.
A hand grabbed my ankle.
I screamed and kicked.
Charles Ashford was lying beneath the window.
His face was gray with pain.
Blood darkened the side of his shirt.
"Stop."
He coughed.
"It is me."
I crawled toward him.
"You are alive."
"For now."
"Who did this?"
His eyes moved toward the cedar trees.
"Not Victoria."
My heart stopped.
"What?"
"Victoria planned the blackout."
He struggled for breath.
"She wanted the envelope."
"Then who attacked you?"
Charles gripped my wrist.
"Someone who needed us to blame her for everything."
A branch snapped in the darkness.
I looked up.
A figure moved between the trees.
"Who?"
Charles tried to sit.
"The tape."
"I have it."
"No."
He shook his head.
"The one in the boathouse is blank."
I stared at him.
"Then where is the real one?"
He pulled a key card from inside his shirt and pushed it into my hand.
"Ask Mercer about St. Catherine's."
Then headlights burst across the lawn.
I shielded my eyes.
Three black SUVs raced toward us.
Doors opened before the vehicles fully stopped.
Gabriel jumped out first.
Detective Kim was directly behind him.
"Lena."
Gabriel ran toward me.
I stood.
"How did you find me?"
He pointed at his jacket.
"My security tag."
I looked down at the wet, torn jacket.
"Of course your jacket has a tracking device."
"It is an access tag, not a tracking device."
"That tracked me."
"We can argue about rich-person clothing later."
He saw Charles.
His face changed.
"Uncle Charles."
Kim knelt beside him.
"Call an ambulance."
Charles grabbed her sleeve.
"Listen."
"Save your strength."
"The person doing this is inside the family."
Kim glanced at Gabriel.
"We know."
Charles shook his head.
"No."
His voice became faint.
"Not Victoria."
Then he lost consciousness.
Paramedics arrived minutes later.
While they worked, Kim pulled me aside.
"You ignored a direct instruction and came here alone."
"Correct."
"You contaminated a potential crime scene."
"Also correct."
"You nearly died."
"That part was not planned."
Her expression did not soften.
"Show me the message."
I reached into Gabriel's jacket pocket.
My phone was gone.
I searched both pockets.
Nothing.
Gabriel frowned.
"You had it when you left the bathroom."
"I put it in your jacket."
"Then it should be there."
Kim looked toward the burning boathouse.
"Could it have fallen inside?"
I remembered squeezing through the window.
"Maybe."
A firefighter emerged carrying a blackened object in a gloved hand.
The sight of the melted case pulled me back to an old apartment kitchen when I was nine.
A grease fire had climbed the wall behind our stove while my mother was working late.
She had taught me never to throw water on oil and never to run back inside for anything, not even photographs.
I remembered standing on the sidewalk in pajamas while firefighters carried out a box of ruined school papers.
My mother had hugged me and said objects were allowed to die so people did not have to.
I had forgotten that lesson the moment I ran into the boathouse for a cassette tape.
I could almost hear her furious voice.
It made me ashamed and strangely comforted at the same time.
"Detective?"
Kim walked over.
It was a phone.
My phone.
The screen had melted.
The messages were gone unless technicians could recover them.
Then another officer approached.
"Detective Kim."
He handed her a clear evidence bag.
Inside was a small silver-handled knife.
There was blood on the blade.
"Found under the broken window."
Kim looked at me.
I felt the ground disappear beneath me.
The knife belonged to the Ashford kitchen.
I had used the same kind all evening to cut lemons behind the bar.
The officer continued.
"Charles Ashford has a stab wound."
Gabriel stared at the knife.
Then at me.
Kim's voice became formal.
May you like
"Lena Bennett, I need you to put your hands where I can see them."
