Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN AT THE LAKE HOUSE
Nathan crossed the greenhouse in three long strides and seized Victor by the front of his catering jacket.
"Tell me what you know about my father."
Victor's cuffed hands hung between them.
Blood from his eyebrow had reached the corner of his mouth, but he was still smiling.
"You should ask your wife."
Nathan pulled him closer.
"My wife is gone."
"She always leaves before the bill arrives."
Detective Monroe stepped between them.
"Let him go, Mr. Whitmore."
"He just said Claire poisoned my father."
"And he will say much more in an interview room if you do not give his attorney a reason to challenge every statement."
Nathan's fist remained tight for one second longer.
Then he released Victor.
Thomas handed Lily to Maria and helped the officers move Victor toward the mansion.
The child buried her face in her mother's neck.
Her small body still trembled.
Nathan looked at them and felt guilt strike him with physical force.
Lily had been taken because she spoke inside his home.
Maria had nearly been shot because she worked for his family.
His mother lay in a hospital because he had trusted the woman he married.
"I am sorry," he said.
Maria looked at him through rain-wet hair.
"Sorry does not keep Claire from coming back."
Nathan accepted the words without defending himself.
"You are right."
Police searched the greenhouse, the tunnel, the garage, and every vehicle on the property.
Claire's shoes were found beside a drainage ditch near the south wall.
Her cream dress was discovered under a hedge.
A maintenance uniform was missing from the equipment shed.
A camera at a gas station two miles away later captured a woman in dark work clothes entering the passenger side of a gray sedan.
The license plate had been stolen from a church van that morning.
Claire had not escaped through luck.
She had prepared.
At midnight, Nathan, Maria, and Lily arrived at St. Matthew's Hospital under police escort.
Eleanor was awake in a private room on the sixth floor.
The sedative level in her blood was falling, but her physician warned that she would remain weak and disoriented for several hours.
Lily approached the bed with careful steps.
"Hi, Grandma Eleanor."
Eleanor opened her eyes.
The moment she saw the child, tears filled them.
"Brave girl."
Lily climbed onto the chair beside the bed.
"I was scared."
"Brave people usually are."
Eleanor reached for her hand.
"They simply tell the truth while they are scared."
Nathan stood on the other side of the bed.
"Mom, I need to ask you about Dad."
Eleanor's expression changed.
"What about him?"
"A man named Victor Hale says Claire was present the night Dad became ill."
The monitors continued their soft rhythm.
Eleanor stared at the blanket.
"Not Claire."
"What does that mean?"
"Her hair was dark then."
Nathan felt the room go cold.
"You knew her?"
"I did not know her."
Eleanor's breathing quickened.
"I saw her."
Maria moved closer.
"Where?"
"At the lake house."
Nathan remembered the night with brutal clarity.
His father, William Whitmore, had hosted a private dinner for investors at the family's lake property outside Chattanooga.
Nathan had planned to attend, but a construction accident in Atlanta kept him at a job site until dawn.
At 11:18 p.m., Eleanor called and said William had collapsed.
By the time Nathan reached the hospital, his father was dead.
The official cause was cardiac arrest.
William had a history of high blood pressure, and no autopsy was requested.
The family had been grieving too hard to question anything.
"Why was Claire there?" Nathan asked.
"She used another name."
Eleanor closed her eyes, reaching through memory.
"Caroline."
"Caroline what?"
"Voss, I think."
Nathan sat down because his knees no longer felt steady.
Claire had told him she was in London on a design internship when his father died.
They supposedly met eight months later at a museum fundraiser in Nashville.
She had laughed when he said he believed in immediate recognition.
She told him fate had taken its time bringing them together.
"What was she doing at the lake house?"
"She worked for the event company."
Eleanor rubbed her temple.
"She poured wine."
"Did you speak to her?"
"Only once."
Eleanor's eyes opened.
"Your father complained that his drink tasted bitter."
Nathan stopped breathing.
"What happened?"
"She took the glass away."
"Did anyone else see it?"
"Victor did."
The name hung in the room.
"Victor was Dad's driver," Nathan said.
"Yes."
Eleanor's voice became faint.
"He told me later that William had argued with someone in the boathouse."
"Who?"
"He would not say."
"Why did you never tell me about the woman?"
Eleanor began to cry.
"I tried."
Nathan stared at her.
"When?"
"After you brought Claire home."
She covered her face.
"I told you I recognized her eyes."
Nathan remembered a Sunday lunch almost three years earlier.
His mother had pulled him aside and said there was something familiar about Claire.
He had kissed her cheek and told her she was imagining things because Claire had the same pale eyes as a cousin from Memphis.
He had not asked another question.
"You dismissed me," Eleanor whispered.
Nathan bowed his head.
"I did."
"Then Claire came to my room."
"What did she say?"
"She said grief was making me suspicious."
Eleanor's hand shook beneath the blanket.
"She said if I kept confusing memories, you would have no choice but to place me somewhere safe."
Maria's eyes filled with anger.
"She started preparing the story before she drugged you."
Eleanor nodded.
"At first, it was small."
"She moved objects and told me I had forgotten."
"She canceled appointments and said I had written down the wrong day."
"She hid your father's photograph and said I was becoming obsessed."
Nathan felt sick.
The pattern was clear.
Claire had not simply intimidated Eleanor.
She had manufactured evidence of decline.
"What papers did she want you to sign?"
Eleanor looked toward the door, though an officer stood outside.
"A durable power of attorney."
"Giving authority to whom?"
"Claire."
Nathan's jaw clenched.
"Did you sign it?"
"No."
"Anything else?"
"A trust amendment."
"What amendment?"
"It transferred my voting shares in Whitmore Development to a charitable foundation controlled by Claire and Julian."
Nathan stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
"Julian was named?"
"Yes."
"How many shares?"
"Twelve percent."
Nathan owned forty-one percent of Whitmore Development.
Eleanor owned twelve.
Julian and a group of aligned investors controlled another twenty-three.
If Julian gained Eleanor's shares, he could build a voting bloc large enough to remove Nathan as chief executive.
This was not only elder abuse.
It was a corporate coup.
Nathan took out his phone.
"I need to call the board counsel."
Detective Monroe entered before he could dial.
"Do not use company counsel."
"Why?"
"Victor has started talking."
"What did he say?"
"He claims Julian has paid him for security information for over a year."
Nathan stared at her.
"Security information about what?"
"Your travel, your mother's appointments, staff schedules, and access codes."
The detective glanced toward Lily.
"We should continue outside."
Maria stood.
"Lily stays with Mrs. Donnelly."
Eleanor tightened her grip on the child's hand.
"She is safe with me."
Nathan almost said that Eleanor was the one who needed protection.
Then he saw the determination in his mother's face and stopped himself.
For the first time in months, she did not look small.
In the hallway, Detective Monroe explained that Victor had admitted helping Claire enter the mansion before Nathan married her.
He had disabled alarms twice and provided copies of keys.
He insisted he had not poisoned William, but he admitted driving Claire to the lake house under the name Caroline Voss.
"Why would he help her?" Maria asked.
"Money and blackmail."
"What kind of blackmail?"
"Victor had stolen fuel cards from the company."
Nathan shook his head.
"My father discovered that."
"Claire discovered it first."
The detective continued.
"She told Victor she would protect him if he gave her information."
"Did he see her poison my father?"
"No."
"Then all we have is an accusation."
"We have more than that."
Detective Monroe showed Nathan a photograph recovered from Victor's wallet.
It had been folded into quarters.
The image showed the Whitmore lake house on the night of William's final dinner.
In the background, a dark-haired young woman carried a tray of drinks.
Her face was turned partly toward the camera.
The hair and clothing were different.
The eyes were not.
Claire had been there.
Nathan gripped the photograph until the paper bent.
"Why did Victor keep this?"
"Insurance."
"Against Claire?"
"Against whoever paid her."
Maria looked at the detective.
"Claire was working for someone?"
"Victor says she received instructions that night through a burner phone."
"Who was on the other end?"
"He claims he never knew."
Nathan looked through the glass panel into his mother's room.
Lily was telling Eleanor something, and Eleanor was smiling weakly.
The sight made his chest ache.
"Daniel found the financial side," Maria said.
"That is why Claire used his dead company."
Detective Monroe nodded.
"We need the notebook."
Nathan assigned two officers to Eleanor's door and arranged a secure room for Maria and Lily at the hospital.
Then he drove with Maria and Detective Monroe to her apartment in East Nashville.
The neighborhood was quiet after the storm.
Water pooled beneath the streetlights.
Maria saw the apartment door from the parking lot and knew immediately that something was wrong.
It stood open.
She ran toward it.
The detective caught her arm.
"Stay behind me."
Inside, every drawer had been emptied.
Cushions were cut open.
Kitchen cabinets hung from broken hinges.
Daniel's framed photograph lay facedown on the floor.
Lily's room had been torn apart.
Her stuffed animals were scattered beneath the window.
Maria pressed a hand over her mouth.
"They knew."
Nathan lifted the broken photograph.
"Where was the notebook?"
"In a metal box under my bed."
The box was gone.
Maria searched through clothing and broken furniture, though she knew it was useless.
Then she saw Daniel's old work boot beneath the dresser.
Only one boot remained.
Its heel had always clicked strangely on tile.
Daniel once joked that it contained a secret compartment like a spy movie.
Maria picked it up.
The heel felt loose.
She twisted it.
A narrow panel opened.
Inside was a tiny blue key.
Nathan stared at it.
"He told you to find that."
"Yes."
Maria's tears spilled freely now.
"I thought grief had made me remember it wrong."
Detective Monroe photographed the key before Maria removed it.
A number was engraved along the side.
317.
"A bank box?" Nathan asked.
"Maybe."
Maria turned the key over.
Three letters were scratched into the metal.
WDL.
Whitmore Development Limited.
Nathan looked at her.
"There are private storage lockers beneath our old headquarters."
"Numbered?"
"Yes."
"Does Claire know about them?"
Nathan's face darkened.
"She hosted a renovation committee meeting there last month."
Detective Monroe's phone rang.
She listened, then looked at Nathan.
"We have another problem."
Julian had been released from the mansion because police lacked legal grounds to detain him.
Twenty minutes later, he called an emergency meeting of the Whitmore Development board.
The stated purpose was to protect the company from Nathan's instability, criminal exposure, and alleged misuse of corporate security.
The meeting would begin at eight in the morning.
Nathan checked the time.
It was 2:17 a.m.
Maria closed her fingers around the blue key.
"Then we have less than six hours to find out what Daniel hid."
Detective Monroe looked toward the shattered apartment door.
"And whoever searched this place knows the same thing."
From inside Lily's bedroom came a faint electronic chirp.
Maria followed the sound to a stuffed rabbit split open at the seam.
A tiny black device blinked inside the cotton filling.
It was a live transmitter.
May you like
Someone had not only searched the apartment.
Someone had been listening to every word.
