● CHAPTER 6: The Garden Gate Camera
The old detective arrived before the dessert plates were set.
His name was Ron Maddox, and retirement had made him rounder but not softer. He came through the service door wearing a wrinkled suit and carrying a leather folder that looked older than Nora.
He had been the first officer at the crash site seven years earlier. He had held Adrian back from the burning car. He had looked him in the eye and said, “I’m sorry,” with the exhausted voice of a man who hated being believed.
Now he stood in the breakfast room and stared at the bracelet.
“I’ll be damned,” Maddox said.
Adrian did not smile. “Tell me what you didn’t tell me then.”
Maddox looked at Nora, then at Celeste, then back at Adrian. “Not in front of the kid.”
Nora lifted her chin. “I’m not little.”
Maddox sighed. “No. I guess you had to stop being little too early.”
Celeste folded her arms. “This is absurd. You’re letting a retired cop interrogate houseguests during a foundation dinner?”
Maddox glanced at her. “Ma’am, I don’t know you well enough to dislike you yet, but you’re making it easy.”
Mrs. Delaney coughed into her sleeve to hide a laugh.
The detective opened his folder. “The crash was always wrong. Too clean in places, too messy in others. We found evidence of two passengers, but not enough remains to identify both. The driver of the second vehicle was never found. Someone made sure the trail died at a shell company in Nevada.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed. “Who owned it?”
“That’s why I came. I didn’t know then. I know now.” Maddox looked at Celeste. “The shell company was tied to a trust controlled by Marrow Holdings.”
The room seemed to shrink.
Celeste went still again.
Adrian spoke softly. “Your family.”
Celeste’s voice lowered. “Careful.”
Maddox looked at Adrian. “There’s more. A woman visited the hospital under a fake name after the crash. Nurses remembered her because she had white roses delivered to a restricted room.”
Adrian turned his head slowly toward Celeste’s brooch.
Celeste removed it and placed it on the table as if the gesture proved innocence.
“My family has thousands of companies. White roses are common. This is fantasy.”
Then Mrs. Delaney appeared in the doorway holding a tablet.
“Sir,” she said, “I checked the garden gate camera.”
Adrian took the tablet.
The footage was silent. It showed Nora stumbling through the side garden the previous evening. It showed Celeste walking out in her white dress. It showed her leaning close to the child, speaking sharply. Then it showed Marcus grabbing Nora’s arm and pulling her toward the gate.
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
Mrs. Delaney swiped to another clip.
This one was from three weeks earlier.
Celeste stood in the same garden speaking to a man in a gray cap. The image was grainy, but not enough to hide an envelope passing from her hand to his.
Maddox leaned in.
“I know him,” he said.
Celeste whispered, “You don’t.”
Maddox smiled without humor. “Sure I do. That’s Peter Vale. He drove the second car.”
Nora’s eyes filled.
May you like
Adrian looked at Celeste.
For the first time, she looked afraid.
