Chapter 5 - A Grave Without a Body
Elena enlarged the cemetery photograph on Rebecca's laptop. The stone read Amelia Brooks, Beloved Daughter, 1993 to 2013.
"Detective Brooks had a daughter?"
"A younger sister," Rebecca said. "Amelia disappeared the same year Rachel died. Her car was found near Bellweather Lake. The family buried an empty casket."
The room seemed to contract around Elena. "Why would Harold visit her grave?"
"That's what I was trying to learn before Margaret caught me."
Elena replayed every detail from the previous night. Harold had watched Margaret strike her. He had done nothing while Andrew refused the ambulance. Yet at the back door, he told Andrew to let go. Then he appeared holding Rebecca's restraint, announcing her escape loudly enough for Brooks to hear.
Perhaps it had not been panic. Perhaps it had been a signal.
Rebecca wanted to drive straight to Bellweather Lake and search the boathouse before Andrew's attorney removed whatever remained. Elena refused.
"We have no equipment, no warrant, and my leg is broken."
"We have no time."
"We also don't know whether you're telling me the truth."
Rebecca turned away, furious. Elena noticed her right hand shaking. Not with rage, but exhaustion.
"You knew Andrew would hurt me," Elena said. "You watched the house for years. Why didn't you warn me sooner?"
"I sent letters. He intercepted them. I called twice. Margaret answered once and Andrew the other time. I approached you outside your office in May. You crossed the street because Andrew had told you a disturbed former employee was stalking the family."
Elena remembered the dark-haired woman beneath the bus shelter. She had avoided her eyes and called Andrew immediately. He arrived within minutes.
"After that," Rebecca continued, "Andrew installed the new cameras. I could no longer get close."
Elena felt shame, then resisted it. Andrew had designed her ignorance. Blaming herself served him.
They needed an ally neither Andrew nor Rebecca controlled. Elena asked for the black phone. Rebecca had kept it. She also had a second number Brooks had used during the old investigation, one the detective believed no one remembered.
Elena sent a single message: Amelia's grave. Noon. Come alone or lose the truth again.
At eleven thirty, Rebecca drove them to the cemetery and parked behind a maintenance shed. Rain had weakened to a gray mist. Elena stayed in the car with binoculars while Rebecca hid among the trees.
Brooks arrived at noon without visible backup. She approached Amelia's grave and found a small recorder Rebecca had placed beside the flowers.
"Tell us why Harold Ward visits your sister," Elena's recorded voice instructed.
Brooks looked toward the trees. "Because he believes Amelia saved his life."
Rebecca stepped from concealment. "From whom?"
Brooks drew her weapon, then lowered it when she recognized Rebecca.
"I thought you were dead."
"You made that convenient."
"I was not at the lake when Rachel died," Brooks said. "Amelia took my car. She was seventeen and angry with me. She followed Harold there because she believed he was meeting our mother."
Elena opened the car door, bracing herself on crutches Rebecca had stolen from the clinic. "Why would Harold meet your mother?"
Brooks stared at Elena's cast. "Because Harold was Amelia's father."
Rebecca went pale.
Brooks explained that Harold and Evelyn Brooks had maintained a secret relationship for years. Amelia discovered it and confronted him at the lake house. She witnessed the argument involving Andrew, Rachel, and the forged trust documents. When the gun fired, Amelia fled into the woods. Harold later found her and hid her, believing Andrew would kill the only witness.
"Where is she now?" Elena asked.
"I don't know. Harold sent my family a letter saying she was alive, then visited the grave every year. I followed him twice. Both times he lost me."
Rebecca raised her chin. "You're lying."
"No. But you are." Brooks took a photograph from her coat. "Officers found this inside the passage behind Andrew's office an hour ago."
The image showed Rebecca entering the Ward estate three weeks before Elena's wedding, not three months ago, not after years of failed warnings. In her hand was a set of keys.
"You had access before Elena married him," Brooks said. "You could have stopped the wedding."
Elena turned toward Rebecca.
May you like
Rebecca's expression did not change, but her trembling stopped.
"I didn't want to stop it," she said. "I needed Andrew to marry her."
