Chapter 15 - The Woman in the Photograph
Eleanor took the receipt to a private forensic laboratory.
The ink was recent.
The paper was authentic.
The restaurant had closed four months earlier after a kitchen fire destroyed most of its records.
Nathan obtained exterior surveillance footage from a neighboring bank.
At six fourteen on the evening in question, Eleanor’s car stopped outside the restaurant.
A woman wearing Eleanor’s blue coat stepped out.
Her face was partially hidden by an umbrella.
At six sixteen, Victor Sloane entered through another door.
At seven forty-two, the woman left alone.
The footage never showed her face clearly.
Eleanor reviewed her calendar.
On that date, she had attended a foundation meeting until five thirty. Her driver took her home at six.
She remembered eating dinner alone.
She remembered reading a report.
She remembered calling Adrian at nine.
Her memory contained no missing time.
But the car in the footage was hers.
The coat was hers.
And according to security records, her private garage opened at five fifty-eight and closed again at eight fourteen.
Someone had used her vehicle.
Someone who moved like her.
Adrian stood beside Nathan in the mansion library.
“Could the footage be altered?” he asked.
“Yes,” Nathan said. “But the vehicle records are stored on a separate system.”
“Could those be altered?”
“Yes.”
Adrian looked at his mother.
“Who had access?”
“Three people,” Eleanor said.
“Myself. Nathan. And my personal assistant.”
Nathan’s expression changed.
“Margaret Vale.”
Margaret had worked for Eleanor for twenty-three years.
She knew every schedule.
Every password.
Every family conflict.
She had been present after Thomas’s death.
She had helped raise Adrian.
And she had been the person who informed Eleanor about the first anonymous warning concerning Vanessa.
Nathan searched Margaret’s current location.
Her phone was turned off.
Her apartment was empty.
Her passport had not been used.
But inside her desk at the Cole Foundation, investigators found a hidden compartment.
It contained photographs of Vanessa from before she met Adrian.
Copies of Thomas Cole’s letters.
Medical files belonging to Eleanor.
And a silver memory card marked ORPHEUS.
Adrian inserted the card into an isolated computer.
Only one video file appeared.
The screen showed a private hospital room.
The date in the corner was fifteen years earlier, two days after Thomas Cole’s death.
A younger Eleanor sat beside the bed.
Across from her was Victor Sloane.
Eleanor stared at the recording.
“I never met him after Thomas died.”
But on-screen, she was clearly speaking to Sloane.
Her younger face was pale with grief.
Sloane placed a document on the table.
Video Eleanor signed it.
Then Sloane handed her a glass of water.
A nurse entered and injected something into Eleanor’s arm.
The image blurred.
Before the recording ended, Sloane leaned close to the camera.
“One day,” he said, “her son will finish what his father began.”
The screen went black.
A second file suddenly appeared.
It had not been visible before.
LIVE TRANSMISSION.
Nathan disconnected the computer from the network.
The file continued playing.
A room appeared.
Margaret Vale sat tied to a chair.
Behind her stood Victor Sloane.
Alive.
Smiling.
He held the real Bellamy box in his hands, even though police believed it had been recovered in Geneva.
“Eleanor,” he said, looking directly into the camera.
“You exposed the wrong fiancée.”
Adrian moved closer to the screen.
Sloane opened the silver box.
Inside was a photograph of Thomas Cole standing beside a young blonde woman.
The woman looked exactly like Vanessa.
But the photograph had been taken twenty-seven years earlier.
Long before Vanessa was born.
Sloane lifted the photograph.
“Ask Vanessa who her mother was.”
The camera shifted.
A second figure stepped into the room.
A woman wearing Eleanor’s blue coat.
Her face remained hidden in shadow.
Sloane smiled.
“And then ask yourself which woman truly entered your mansion disguised as a housekeeper.”
The transmission ended.
At that exact moment, every clock in the mansion stopped.
The front gates opened by themselves.
And from the dark driveway came the sound of a car approaching the house.
Eleanor moved toward the foyer.
Adrian caught her arm.
“Don’t.”
Headlights swept across the tall windows.
A black sedan stopped outside.
The rear door opened.
A woman stepped onto the pavement wearing a black maid uniform, thick glasses, and a silver wig.
She raised her face toward the mansion.
Even from behind the glass, Eleanor recognized the gold ring on the woman’s hand.
The same ring Eleanor was wearing.
May you like
Then the woman smiled.
And the front door began to unlock.
