Chapter 13 - The Night at the Side Door

I called 911 before opening the camera feed. The figure in a dark coat kept checking the street. When the porch light came on, I saw her face.

Brooke.

I moved to the living room, where I could see both entrances without standing in the windows. The dispatcher told me to stay inside. A key scraped against the lock, then the alarm began to sound.

Brooke backed away, then tried the handle again as if anger could make the key work. The dead bolt held. A patrol car turned onto the street less than three minutes later. Brooke ran toward her car, but the officers stopped her before she reached it.

She claimed she had come to return a box of photographs. The officers found no box in her car. They did find a spare key to my side door and a folded note with the name of my attorney on it.

When Detective Kim arrived, she asked me to stay inside while the officers photographed the lock and the footprints on the wet step. I was shaking so hard I had to hold a mug with both hands. Celia came over and sat beside me.

"I keep thinking I should have known," I said.

"Trusting someone isn't the crime," she told me. "What they did with your trust is on them."

Police documented the attempted entry and referred the evidence to the investigator. Daniel explained that the legal process had to catch up with our suspicions. It was maddening, but not the same as doing nothing.

At dawn, Detective Kim called. The cloud provider had recovered the full audio file. It included a conversation between Brooke and Evan from two weeks earlier.

Brooke said, "Your mother won't agree while she thinks she has a choice."

Evan answered, "I said I would talk to her. I didn't say I'd help you forge anything."

Then Brooke replied, "You already gave me the signature scan. Don't pretend you're clean."

There was a pause. Evan's voice came back quieter.

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"Just don't make her leave before we can pay the supplier."

The recording continued for another minute, but Detective Kim stopped it there. She wanted Daniel present when I heard the rest.