Chapter 10 - Remove Her
The phrase followed me into sleep.
Remove her from the equation.
At seven the next morning, police moved us to a hotel under a different reservation name while they tried to locate Vanessa and Rick.
Margaret had already been taken in for questioning.
She walked out six hours later without charges.
Her attorney told reporters it was “a private family misunderstanding distorted by an emotional daughter-in-law.”
I watched the clip on my phone and laughed so hard I almost cried.
“Emotional,” I said.
Daniel sat on the other bed. “She’s going to make this ugly.”
“She already did.”
A knock sounded at the door.
I froze.
Daniel moved first. “Who is it?”
“Detective Ramirez.”
He showed his badge through the peephole.
Inside, he placed a clear evidence bag on the desk.
It contained a small audio recorder.
“We found this in Margaret’s office.”
He pressed play.
Vanessa’s voice filled the room.
“She won’t sign.”
Margaret answered, calm and cold. “Then we create a reason a judge won’t need her signature.”
“What kind of reason?”
“A safety event.”
“What if Ellie gets hurt?”
Silence.
Then Margaret said, “Not badly.”
I covered my mouth.
The recording continued.
Vanessa: “Daniel will panic.”
Margaret: “Daniel always panics. Then he obeys.”
Daniel’s face collapsed.
Ramirez stopped the recording.
“That’s enough for us to pursue conspiracy-related charges if we can connect it to a specific incident,” he said.
“What incident?”
“We think the kitchen fall may have been staged.”
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A text.
STOP TALKING TO POLICE.
Then another.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT DANIEL DID.
A third arrived with an attachment.
It was a video.
I pressed play.
Daniel appeared on-screen in Margaret’s basement, signing a stack of documents.
The date in the corner was three months earlier.
May you like
And beside his signature were the words:
PETITION FOR EMERGENCY SOLE GUARDIANSHIP.
