Chapter 7 - The House Camera
The mansion where my mother died had been renovated twice.
Lucy assumed nothing remained from twenty years earlier.
She was wrong.
A security company had installed an early digital camera system in the garage and side entrance.
The system was replaced after Elena's death.
But the installer kept archived service backups.
One disk survived.
The image quality was terrible.
The timestamp drifted by fourteen minutes.
But people were recognizable.
At 10:41 p.m., Victor Hale entered through the side door.
At 11:03, Lucy arrived.
At 11:26, my father arrived.
At 11:52, Dr. Pike arrived.
At 12:18, paramedics came.
The official family story said Lucy had been at a fundraiser until after midnight.
Lie.
My father had claimed he was home with Elena the entire evening.
Lie.
The camera could not show what happened inside.
But it proved the four people connected to the cover-up were there.
Rachel obtained a search warrant for old storage units connected to Victor Hale's company.
Most were empty.
One contained archived VHS tapes.
Victor had recorded client debriefs.
Insurance.
Blackmail.
Habit.
We found a tape labeled BENNETT / CARTER.
My hands shook before it played.
Victor sat in an office.
Lucy was off camera.
Her voice asked whether Elena had suffered.
Victor laughed.
"Not enough for what she cost you."
I nearly vomited.
Then my father's voice appeared.
"Stop."
He was there too.
Victor said.
"You asked me to scare her."
My father answered.
"I did not ask you to drug her."
The room froze.
Lucy said.
"It doesn't matter now."
My father shouted.
"It matters to me."
Then Lucy delivered the sentence that became slap number nine.
"You wanted the divorce stopped."
"I stopped it."
My father had hired Victor to frighten my mother.
Lucy had escalated the plan.
Victor had administered something.
Digoxin.
Maybe.
We still needed proof.
The tape continued.
Jonathan threatened police.
Lucy reminded him that he had paid Victor.
She reminded him about Pike.
She reminded him that if the truth emerged, Ana would learn her father helped create the situation that killed her mother.
My father began crying on the tape.
Lucy said.
"Then be a father."
"Protect her from that."
That became the lie he lived for twenty years.
He protected himself and called it protecting me.
I turned off the video.
Miriam waited.
"What do you want to do?"
"Everything legally possible."
"And personally?"
I thought of Lucy's face after the second slap.
I thought of the headline.
I thought of my mother's diary.
"I want her to lose the thing she actually cares about."
"Money?"
"No."
"Control."
That afternoon, the Bennett Foundation board called an emergency meeting.
By evening, Lucy had been suspended as president.
May you like
Slap ten.
