Chapter 6 - What the Camera Remembered
On Mateo's tablet, the restored footage showed Celeste standing beside the basement stairs seven minutes before the lights went out. Malcolm handed her a slim envelope. A man in a gray suit took it and disappeared into the corridor.
“That man just tried to take Ivy,” Nora said.
Celeste folded her hands. “I asked him to keep an eye on a child wandering through a house full of strangers.”
“By locking her in a basement?” Gideon asked.
“I didn't order that.”
Two police officers arrived with the estate manager. Mateo handed over the phone photographs and camera footage without allowing Malcolm to touch either device.
Detective Lena Ortiz introduced herself and listened while Nora described the visit to Ivy's school. Her face changed when she heard the same man had been seen there before.
“Until we sort this out,” Ortiz said, “I'd like both of you somewhere safe.”
“Here,” Gideon insisted.
Nora shook her head. “This house hasn't been safe for Ivy for ten minutes.”
Ortiz took the guard downstairs. Halfway out, he stopped.
“I never touched the kid,” he said. “They said she was being kept from her family.”
“Who said that?”
He glanced up at Celeste and swallowed. “Ask the man who paid me.”
Malcolm began to protest, but Ortiz told him to remain available for questioning.
In the library, Gideon offered Nora the guest cottage, a driver, whatever she needed. She refused the driver but accepted Mateo's promise to arrange an independent security detail.
“I'm not bringing Ivy back here tonight,” she said.
“I understand.” Gideon knelt beside the girl. “But may I see you again?”
Ivy studied him. “Did my mom love this house?”
“She loved the piano,” he said. “The house, not so much.”
That earned him the smallest smile.
As they left, Amina Shah, the family attorney, called Gideon. She had finally found Lydia's archived trust documents.
“Gideon,” she said, “there's a clause about any surviving child of Lydia's.”
“Tell me.”
“Someone filed a sworn statement ten years ago saying Lydia died without a child. Whoever signed it collected twenty-eight million dollars.”
“And who signed it?”
May you like
Amina exhaled.
“Your wife.”
