CHAPTER 5 THE WOMAN WHO HELPED THEM LIE
Detective Ortiz refused to let me go alone.
Vanessa had disabled the mansion’s main electrical system, but officers still controlled the exits. Every door and window was surrounded.
“She can’t escape,” Detective Reed whispered.
“She doesn’t need to,” I said. “She wants me.”
We moved through the dark hallway while emergency lights pulsed along the baseboards. My mother remained in Grandmother’s study with two officers and Mr. Whitaker.
I hated leaving her, but Aunt Marjorie was somewhere below us.
Ortiz pushed my wheelchair toward the service elevator. It no longer worked, so Reed and another officer carried me down the rear staircase.
Every jolt sent pain through my neck.
When we reached the second floor, we heard music.
The same string-quartet recording that had played during the engagement party drifted through hidden speakers.
Vanessa had recreated the night she pushed me.
The ballroom doors stood open.
Candles flickered across the long tables. Engagement photographs covered the walls. In each one, Vanessa and Brent smiled as though they had never harmed anyone.
At the center of the room, Aunt Marjorie sat tied to a chair.
Vanessa stood behind her holding a knife against her throat.
She was still wearing the pale blue dress she had worn to her bail hearing. A black monitoring device encircled her ankle.
“Stop there,” she ordered.
Detective Ortiz raised her weapon.
“Put down the knife, Vanessa.”
“You think I’m afraid of prison?”
“You should be.”
Vanessa laughed.
“You don’t understand anything. My grandmother treated me like a mistake my entire life. She gave Paige everything because Paige knew how to sit quietly and pretend she didn’t want it.”
“I didn’t know about the trust,” I said.
“That’s the worst part. You didn’t even have to try.”
Blood trickled down Marjorie’s neck where the blade touched her skin.
“Tell them,” Vanessa demanded.
Marjorie was sobbing.
“Tell them what you did.”
Her mother shook her head.
Vanessa pressed the knife harder.
“Tell them!”
Marjorie looked at me.
“I replaced Evelyn’s will.”
My chest tightened.
“She threatened to expose Malcolm,” Marjorie continued. “He said Vanessa would lose everything. He convinced me Evelyn was punishing a child for the sins of her parents.”
“I wasn’t a child,” Vanessa snapped.
“You were twenty-seven.”
“You let her humiliate me!”
“I tried to protect you.”
“No. You protected yourself.”
For the first time, I understood that Vanessa’s hatred was not limited to me. She hated Marjorie too.
Her mother had spent years lying about her father, hiding the affair and encouraging Vanessa’s resentment rather than admitting the truth.
“Where is Dr. Voss?” Detective Ortiz asked.
Vanessa smiled.
“Closer than you think.”
A gunshot exploded from the balcony.
The bullet struck the floor beside Ortiz.
Officers pulled me behind a marble column. Reed fired toward the upper railing as Dr. Voss disappeared into the shadows.
Vanessa dragged Marjorie’s chair backward.
The knife slipped.
Marjorie screamed as blood ran down her collar.
“Vanessa!” I shouted.
She looked at me.
“You want the trust? Come sign it over.”
“You can’t control it even if I do.”
“Malcolm found a way.”
“Your father is using you.”
Her face twisted.
“He’s the only person who ever told me the truth.”
“He poisoned Grandmother.”
“She was going to destroy us.”
“He drugged me. He let you think I was dead in the wine cellar.”
Vanessa hesitated.
Only for a second.
But Marjorie noticed.
“So he never told you,” her mother whispered.
“Told me what?”
Marjorie’s voice shook.
“Malcolm didn’t want the trust for you.”
Vanessa’s eyes narrowed.
“He convinced you Paige was stealing your inheritance,” Marjorie continued. “But the documents he made me sign transferred control to him. Not you.”
“You’re lying.”
“I saw the corporation papers. He planned to declare you mentally unstable after Paige was gone.”
Vanessa’s grip loosened.
Above us, Dr. Voss shouted, “Don’t listen to her!”
The distraction was enough.
Marjorie threw her weight sideways.
The chair toppled. Vanessa lost the knife. Detective Reed rushed forward and pulled Marjorie away as Ortiz moved toward Vanessa.
Another gunshot struck the chandelier.
Glass rained across the ballroom.
The room plunged into deeper darkness.
Someone grabbed the handles of my wheelchair.
At first, I assumed it was an officer.
Then Dr. Voss whispered beside my ear.
“Stay quiet, or your mother dies.”
He pushed me through a side door.
I tried to lock the wheels, but he tilted the chair backward and dragged me down a service corridor. Pain shot through my skull.
At the end of the hall, a panel stood open in the wall.
A hidden passage.
Old Charleston mansions had once been built with servants’ corridors and concealed staircases. Dr. Voss knew the house better than the police did.
He pulled me inside and shut the panel.
We descended into darkness.
“You’re not getting the trust,” I said.
“I don’t need the trust.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“Because Evelyn recorded everything.”
He stopped at a basement landing.
“The original files contain more than financial crimes. They contain names, payments and medical records connected to twenty years of fraud.”
My stomach turned.
“How many people did you hurt?”
“People believe doctors. That makes truth remarkably flexible.”
He had altered medical evaluations, declared competent people confused and helped wealthy families gain control over vulnerable relatives.
Grandmother had uncovered his entire operation.
“She made copies,” I said.
He went still.
I had guessed correctly.
“You don’t know where they are,” he said.
“Neither do you.”
He grabbed my injured shoulder.
“Where would Evelyn hide them?”
I cried out.
Then a voice came from the darkness behind him.
“She gave them to me.”
Aunt Marjorie stood at the top of the hidden staircase.
Detective Ortiz was beside her with her weapon raised.
Voss pulled a gun from his coat and pressed it against my temple.
“Back away.”
Ortiz did not move.
Marjorie stepped forward.
“Malcolm, let her go.”
“You ruined everything.”
“No. I let you ruin my daughter.”
Vanessa appeared behind Ortiz, her hands cuffed in front of her. An officer held her arm.
She stared at Voss.
“Is it true?”
“Vanessa, this is not the time.”
“Were you going to take the trust and have me committed?”
He looked at her with irritation rather than love.
“You have always been emotionally unstable.”
Her face collapsed.
He had spent her entire life feeding her anger, then planned to use that same anger against her.
Vanessa took one step backward.
“I did everything you told me.”
“And you did it badly.”
The cruelty in his voice changed something inside her.
She lunged.
Even handcuffed, she struck his arm as he pulled the trigger.
The bullet tore into the wall above my head.
Detective Ortiz fired once.
Dr. Voss fell backward onto the stone floor.
Officers rushed down the stairs.
His gun slid beneath my wheelchair.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Vanessa looked at me.
“I saved you.”
I stared at her.
“You helped put me here.”
Her expression hardened again.
“I still deserve the trust.”
Detective Ortiz pulled her away.
Dr. Voss survived the gunshot. He was transported under armed guard and charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, conspiracy, fraud and multiple counts related to Grandmother’s treatment.
Aunt Marjorie was hospitalized with a superficial neck wound.
Vanessa returned to jail without bail.
It should have been over.
But two days later, Aunt Marjorie disappeared from the hospital.
On her pillow, police found a note addressed to me.
Paige,
I am going to find the copies Evelyn gave me. They prove everything. Do not trust Brent. He was never merely Vanessa’s fiancé.
May you like
He was Malcolm’s partner.
And he has your mother.
