Chapter 8 - THE NIGHT MARGARET FELL
Someone screamed.
Emily dropped behind the table as a second gunshot struck the library door.
Glass shattered.
Detective Graham shouted for everyone to stay down. His officers drew their weapons and moved toward the hall.
Emergency lights flickered on.
Margaret lay near the fireplace.
Blood spread across the shoulder of her cream coat.
“Mother!” Vanessa crawled toward her.
Emily followed.
Margaret was conscious, but her breathing was shallow.
The bullet had passed through the upper part of her arm. Emily pressed a folded cloth against the wound while Vanessa called for an ambulance.
Another crash sounded downstairs.
Then an officer shouted, “The suspect is outside!”
Footsteps thundered through the mansion.
Detective Graham returned to the library.
“Did anyone see the shooter?”
“No,” Vanessa said.
Margaret’s hand closed around Emily’s wrist.
“The envelope,” she whispered.
“What envelope?”
“In Bellweather House.”
Her eyes moved toward Vanessa.
“Do not let Daniel open it.”
Then she lost consciousness.
The ambulance carried Margaret away under police escort.
Graham ordered the mansion secured, but the intruder had escaped through a service corridor. A damaged security panel indicated that someone had used an authorized Mercer family code.
Daniel possessed such a code.
So did Vanessa.
Margaret’s assistant also had one.
Emily sat in the library while officers photographed the scene.
Vanessa stood at the window, her clothes stained with her mother’s blood.
“You knew about an envelope?” Emily asked.
“No.”
“She looked at you when she mentioned it.”
“She was losing blood.”
“She said it was at Bellweather House.”
Vanessa turned around.
“My mother has hidden information from me for years.”
“And you have hidden information from everyone.”
“That does not mean I shot her.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“You were thinking it.”
Emily looked at the bullet hole in the door.
“Daniel could not have been here if he was in the hospital.”
“Unless he left before the police secured his room.”
“Would he shoot his own mother?”
Vanessa’s expression became bitter.
“You still believe there are limits to what Daniel might do.”
Detective Graham approached them.
“We found the weapon outside.”
He placed a transparent evidence bag on the table.
Inside was a black handgun.
Vanessa stared at it.
“That belongs to me.”
Emily stepped away from her.
“It was taken from my safe last week,” Vanessa said.
“Did you report it missing?” Graham asked.
“No.”
“Why?”
“I thought Daniel had borrowed it.”
“You thought your brother took your gun, and you said nothing?”
“He has access to my apartment.”
Graham studied her.
“The weapon was wiped clean.”
“Then you have no evidence I fired it.”
“We found your glove beside the service door.”
Vanessa looked down.
One of her black gloves was missing.
Emily remembered seeing both gloves when they left the cottage.
Or had Vanessa removed one in the car?
The night had become a maze of altered images and incomplete memories.
“Where is Arthur?” Emily asked.
“We don’t know.”
“Could he have come here?”
“He knew the property,” Margaret’s assistant said. “He worked for the family for thirty years.”
Vanessa looked at her.
“He worked for the trust, not the family.”
“What is the difference?” Emily asked.
“A family protects its members,” Vanessa said. “A trust protects its purpose.”
“And what is its purpose?”
“To keep Bellweather House out of the wrong hands.”
Emily thought about her father, the forged deed, and the restitution clause.
“Whose hands are the right ones?”
Vanessa looked at her but did not answer.
Graham received another phone call.
“Daniel has left the hospital,” he announced.
“Escaped?” Emily asked.
“He signed himself out.”
“Where did he go?”
“We are trying to locate him.”
Emily already knew.
“Bellweather House.”
She stood.
“The envelope is there.”
Graham blocked her path.
“You are not going anywhere.”
“If Daniel opens it, we may lose the only evidence my father left.”
“You do not know what is inside.”
“Margaret was shot because someone wanted it.”
“That is exactly why you are staying here.”
Emily turned toward Vanessa.
Vanessa understood.
The mansion’s east corridor connected to the old garage. Graham’s officers were concentrated near the entrance and library.
Vanessa nodded almost imperceptibly.
Minutes later, while Graham spoke with the hospital, Vanessa overturned a lamp.
The crash drew everyone’s attention.
Emily slipped through the side door.
She ran along the dark corridor, entered the garage, and found Vanessa already starting an old silver coupe.
Emily climbed inside.
“You planned that quickly,” she said.
“I have been escaping this family my whole life.”
They drove through the rear gate before the police realized they were gone.
As Bellweather House appeared beyond the trees, Emily saw lights moving behind its windows.
Someone was already inside.
Vanessa stopped the car near the lake.
“The main gate will be monitored.”
“There’s another way?”
“A service tunnel from the boathouse.”
They crossed the wet ground and entered the small wooden building beside the water.
Vanessa opened a trapdoor beneath a storage bench.
A stone stairway descended into darkness.
Emily switched on her phone light.
The tunnel smelled of damp earth.
Halfway through, they heard a sound behind them.
May you like
The trapdoor had opened again.
Someone was following.
