Chapter 5 - The Investigator Who Vanished
I drove to Mason’s office with Malcolm behind me despite the instruction to come alone.
The door was open.
The lights were on.
Mason was gone.
There was blood beside his desk and a coffee cup still steaming near his laptop.
The police arrived twelve minutes later.
One detective took my statement while another photographed the room.
Then Detective Owen Bell asked a question that made me turn.
“When was the last time you saw your wife?”
“Which wife?”
He stared at me.
“My first wife was declared dead eighteen months ago.”
Bell glanced toward his partner.
“I know.”
Something about his tone bothered me.
“You knew before I said her name.”
“Your investigator had a file open on her.”
“No, he didn’t.”
Bell’s eyes narrowed.
I pointed toward the desk. Mason’s Olivia file was kept in a red folder. It was gone.
Bell changed the subject.
“We’ll contact you.”
I left with less trust than I had arrived with.
Back at the house, Grace, Sophie’s longtime nanny, was waiting beside the stairs. She had been visiting her sister in Arizona and returned after Malcolm called.
The moment Sophie saw her, she ran into her arms.
That alone told me how badly I had failed to see what was happening.
Grace looked at Sophie’s bruises and went white.
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
Her eyes filled with anger.
“You left her alone with Vanessa after I told you something was wrong.”
“I know.”
“You said Sophie was adjusting.”
“I know.”
She wanted to yell at me.
I wanted her to.
Instead she said, “Then fix it.”
I took Sophie upstairs and sat beside her bed.
“Can I ask you something about Mommy?”
She nodded.
“Why doesn’t she come when I’m home?”
Sophie picked at the blanket.
“She says you might get sick.”
“What kind of sick?”
“The sleeping kind.”
My stomach tightened.
“What does that mean?”
Sophie crawled off the bed and opened her nightstand.
Inside was a small plastic recorder shaped like a pink keychain.
“Mommy gave me this.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
“She told you to record something?”
Sophie shook her head.
“She said if the blue light came on and I heard Uncle Lucas or Vanessa talking, I should press this button.”
Grace and I looked at each other.
I pressed play.
Static.
Footsteps.
Then Lucas’s voice.
“Once Ethan signs the competency amendment, the trust can move.”
Vanessa answered, “He won’t sign it if Sophie keeps fighting me.”
Lucas said, “Then stop trying to make her like you. We only need her afraid of him.”
My blood went cold.
Vanessa whispered something too low to hear.
Then Lucas said clearly:
“If Ethan remembers what happened at Harbor Ridge, we’re finished.”
The recording ended.
I stared at the device.
Grace whispered, “What happened at Harbor Ridge?”
I didn’t know.
But someone had spent eighteen months making sure I never asked.
I made Sophie promise not to use the recorder again.
She frowned. “Mommy said it was important.”
“It is. You’re more important.”
Grace took the device from her gently.
Then Sophie said, “There’s another one.”
We both turned.
“Another recorder?”
“No. Another thing Mommy gave me.”
She reached into the pocket of her pajamas and pulled out a tiny brass key.
“Where does it go?”
“She said it opens the place where Grandma keeps Daddy’s missing day.”
Grace looked at me.
“My missing day?”
Sophie nodded.
“Mommy said Grandma would understand.”
I thought of Eleanor’s house, the locked study that had belonged to my father, and the old desk nobody touched after his death.
Suddenly the question was no longer whether my mother knew I had been drugged.
It was whether she had kept a record of it.
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