Chapter 4 - The Last Afternoon
The video lasted eleven seconds. Nora faced the camera, squinting into sunlight. The tattooed man held her bicycle upright near the Mercer estate's boathouse. “Tell Daddy what you found,” he said.
Nora lifted a red plastic key. “This opens the secret room under the dock.”
The clip ended when someone offscreen shouted her name.
Evelyn watched it again. “That is not the day she drowned.”
“How do you know?” Marcus asked.
“Her raincoat was missing a button the week before. In this video, every button is there.”
The police report said Nora had wandered toward the dock one stormy afternoon, slipped, and disappeared beneath the water. Daniel had been attending a conference in Hartford. Sloane, then Daniel's girlfriend, claimed to have been shopping. Both had alibis. No one had accused them of wrongdoing.
“Why didn't I know about a secret room?” Helen asked.
“Because my husband built it before he died,” Evelyn replied. “He called it the pump cellar. Daniel used it as a teenager.”
Marcus saved two copies of the video. “We need the original timestamps and the complete footage. Until then, this proves only that somebody filmed her.”
It was the kind of careful answer Evelyn needed. She had already made one reckless decision with the teapot. She wouldn't make another with Nora's memory.
Daniel entered the salon without knocking. “Mom, I've spoken to the captain. We're going home.”
“Who is the man in this video?”
Daniel glanced at the screen. “A handyman. I don't know.”
“Look longer.”
“I said I don't know.”
Helen folded her arms. “The tattoo looks familiar. Didn't a man with those marks work on your marina renovation?”
Daniel's anger arrived too quickly. “Stop acting like detectives.”
Evelyn stood. “Then answer as a father. Where were you when your daughter vanished?”
Daniel stared at her. “You know where I was.”
May you like
“I know what you told me.”
The bridge radio crackled overhead. Luis's voice broke through, tight and urgent. “We have a second vessel approaching without navigation lights. It's matching our speed.”
