Chapter 3 - SOMEONE HAD BEEN INSIDE
The camera was battery powered and cheap.
Security logs showed an old contractor code had been used eleven times in two months.
The code belonged to Ryan.
I called him.
“Why have you been inside my property?”
“I checked on it.”
“Eleven times?”
“You never did.”
“Did you install the camera?”
“No.”
For once, he sounded honestly confused.
Then he said, “Ask Margaret why she was there last Tuesday.”
I turned.
My mother went pale.
“You were here?”
“I needed money.”
“I give you money.”
“I lost some.”
“How?”
She stared at her tea.
“An investment.”
It was an online scam.
Forty-two thousand dollars.
Almost everything she had saved.
She had come to the mansion because she thought I kept emergency cash there.
“I wasn’t thinking,” she whispered.
Then she admitted she had stolen a key from Ryan’s desk.
“Why did Ryan have a key?”
“He has a whole drawer of things from this house.”
Before she could explain, a smoke detector screamed upstairs.
Smoke poured from the master closet.
Someone had set a cardboard box on fire.
Across the mirror, in red lipstick, one word had been written.
May you like
LEAVE.
