Chapter 7 - The Eye Above the Crib
Anna did not sleep.
By sunrise, Leo had been medically cleared, but Detective Alvarez asked them not to return to the estate. Richard booked a private suite at a downtown hotel under another name and brought two security officers to the floor.
The hidden nursery camera sat in an evidence box at police headquarters.
“It wasn’t connected to your home network,” Alvarez explained later that morning. “It used its own cellular transmitter.”
“Who was watching my son?” Anna asked.
“We’re tracing the account.”
Richard stood beside her with his arms crossed.
“What does it record?”
“Motion clips. Audio too.”
Anna felt sick.
Alvarez slid a printed photograph across the table.
The camera’s memory card had not been removed during the break-in.
Whoever had entered the house either did not know it existed or had been interrupted before reaching it.
“We recovered twenty-seven clips,” Alvarez said. “Most are ordinary. You putting Leo to bed. Richard reading to him. Housekeeping.”
“And Vanessa?”
Alvarez’s eyes sharpened.
“Six clips.”
She opened a laptop.
The first showed Vanessa entering Leo’s nursery three weeks earlier. She stood over the crib while he slept, then moved directly toward the baby monitor and unplugged it.
The second clip showed her searching Anna’s dresser.
In the third, she held Anna’s prescription bottle up to the hidden camera.
Anna frowned. “Those were antibiotics.”
“Not after that night,” Richard said.
Alvarez played another clip.
Vanessa emptied the bottle into a tissue, replaced the pills with similar-looking tablets from her pocket, and returned the bottle to the drawer.
Anna’s mouth went dry.
“What were they?”
“Lab is testing them.”
Richard pushed back from the table so hard his chair scraped the floor.
“Why would she do that?”
Alvarez paused the video on Vanessa’s face.
“Maybe to make Anna sick. Maybe to create medical records. Maybe both.”
Anna remembered the dizziness she had felt ten days earlier. The afternoon she nearly fainted while holding Leo. Vanessa had been there.
Vanessa had taken Leo from her arms and said, loudly enough for the housekeeper to hear, “Anna, this keeps happening. You need help.”
Anna had believed she was exhausted.
Alvarez clicked another file.
“This one was recorded yesterday afternoon.”
Vanessa entered the nursery carrying Anna’s cream envelope.
She removed the trust documents and photographed every page.
Then she looked directly toward the hidden camera.
Not accidentally.
Directly.
And smiled.
Richard leaned closer.
“She knew it was there.”
Alvarez nodded.
“Which means the hidden camera wasn’t spying on Vanessa.”
Anna understood.
“It was hers.”
Alvarez opened the final clip.
Vanessa’s voice filled the room.
A man stood off-camera.
Vanessa said, “Once Anna is declared unfit, Richard will have no choice. And if he fights me…”
The man answered in a low voice.
“Then we use the other plan.”
Richard’s face drained of color.
Anna recognized the voice before he did.
May you like
It belonged to Richard’s closest friend.
Nolan Price.
