Chapter 16 - The Phone in the Garden

Margaret remembered dropping her phone before she hit the bottom step.

“I had it in my cardigan pocket,” she told Daniel. “I was recording because I wanted Olivia to stop denying what she had done.”

Police had searched the foyer.

No phone.

Olivia said she had not taken it.

Simon denied entering the house that afternoon.

Caleb claimed he was already driving south.

That left one possibility.

Someone had found the phone before police arrived.

Daniel reviewed the exterior camera footage again with Detective Reed.

At 4:31 p.m., five minutes after the fall, the family’s housekeeper, Rosa, ran out the side door toward the garden.

At 4:33, she returned.

Rosa had worked for Margaret for fifteen years.

When Reed questioned her, she began to cry.

“I thought Mrs. Mercer was dead,” she said. “I heard Mrs. Olivia say, ‘Where is the phone?’ I got scared.”

“So you took it?”

“I saw it under the staircase. I picked it up before anyone noticed.”

“Where is it?”

Rosa wiped her eyes.

“In the garden.”

She led them to a stone planter beneath a row of hydrangeas. Buried inside a waterproof seed container was Margaret’s phone.

The screen was cracked.

The device still turned on.

The recording began three minutes before the fall.

Olivia: “Give me the folder.”

Margaret: “No.”

Olivia: “You don’t understand what Simon will do.”

Margaret: “Then help me stop him.”

Olivia: “It’s too late.”

Margaret: “It is not too late to tell the truth.”

Footsteps.

A struggle.

Then Margaret’s voice, sharp and clear:

“Take your hands off me.”

Olivia: “Please.”

Margaret: “Olivia—”

A violent scrape.

The crash.

Daniel flinched even though he knew it was coming.

Then came silence.

A few seconds later, Olivia’s footsteps descended.

Her whisper was barely audible.

“You should have let me fix it.”

The evidence was enough to destroy her final denial.

But the recording did not end there.

Another set of footsteps entered the foyer.

A man spoke.

“Move away from her.”

Olivia gasped.

Daniel leaned toward the speaker.

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He knew the voice.

It belonged to Martin Shaw—the family attorney.