Chương 9
Mara took several seconds.
“My aunt Leah had a daughter named Camille Hart Lawson.”
Victoria glanced at Chloe.
“She was born in 1992.”
Mara continued.
“Leah never married Camille’s father.”
“Richard Vance,” Chloe said.
“Yes.”
“Did he acknowledge her?”
“Privately.”
“Legally?”
“Eventually.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means my family fought him for years.”
Mara’s voice tightened.
“My grandfather forced a paternity test through litigation.”
Victoria looked at the fetal monitor as the heartbeat continued its rapid rhythm.
“What happened after that?”
“Richard’s father created a trust that included Camille.”
“Julian told us.”
Mara went quiet.
“He told you about the trust?”
“Yes.”
“Then he knows more than I thought.”
Chloe stepped closer to the phone.
“He knows she disappeared.”
Mara exhaled.
“Everyone involved knew that.”
“He also heard his parents fighting afterward.”
Silence.
Victoria said, “Mara?”
“What did they say?”
Chloe answered.
“Richard told Eleanor she ruined everything.”
Mara did not speak.
“And Eleanor said Richard was the one who put Camille in the car.”
A small sound came through the speaker.
Not a gasp.
More like someone sitting down too quickly.
Victoria said, “Mara?”
“I’m here.”
Chloe’s voice trembled.
“Did you know that?”
“No.”
“You sound like you did.”
“I knew there was a car.”
Victoria felt cold.
“What car?”
Mara hesitated.
“A blue Oldsmobile.”
Chloe sat back down.
“Whose?”
“Richard Vance’s company owned it.”
Victoria looked at Chloe.
“Was Camille last seen in it?”
“No.”
Mara’s answer came too fast.
“That was the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“My aunt said Richard picked Camille up from school.”
“Did the school confirm it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he didn’t sign her out.”
Mara paused.
“He waited across the street.”
Chloe pressed both hands against her knees.
“How did Leah know?”
“Camille called her from a pay phone.”
The detail made the entire story feel suddenly real.
Not a trust.
Not an inheritance.
Not a missing-person file.
A seven-year-old girl standing beside a pay phone in 1999.
Victoria asked, “What did she say?”
“Only that her father had come to get her.”
Mara’s voice had become very quiet.
“Leah told her not to go.”
Chloe closed her eyes.
“Did she?”
“We don’t know.”
“What happened after the call?”
“She vanished.”
The fetal monitor kept beating.
Victoria stared at the numbers on the screen.
Chloe whispered, “And the car?”
“Richard reported it stolen the next morning.”
Victoria frowned.
“Was it found?”
“Three weeks later.”
“Where?”
“Outside Laredo.”
Chloe’s head came up.
“Near the border?”
“Yes.”
“Any blood?”
“No.”
“Anything belonging to Camille?”
“No.”
“Then why does it matter?”
Mara hesitated.
“Because the mileage didn’t fit Richard’s story.”
Victoria sat straighter.
“How far had it been driven?”
“Almost nine hundred miles after the reported theft.”
Chloe stared at the phone.
“Someone drove it.”
“Yes.”
“Did police know who?”
“No.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Richard’s.”
“Anyone else?”
“Several partials.”
“Eleanor’s?”
Mara did not answer immediately.
Chloe’s voice dropped.
“Were my mother’s prints in that car?”
“Yes.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Victoria reached instinctively for the bed rail.
Chloe stood again.
“She was in the car.”
“Her prints were.”
“That means she was in it.”
“It means she had been in it at some point.”
“Don’t lawyer me.”
Mara’s voice softened.
“I’m trying not to give you certainty where there isn’t any.”
Chloe turned away.
Victoria understood why Mara had become the kind of attorney who distrusted certainty.
“What happened to the investigation?”
“Richard had money.”
Mara’s bitterness showed for the first time.
“Good lawyers.”
“Police corruption?”
“I can’t prove that.”
“Pressure?”
“Yes.”
“From whom?”
“Richard’s father, mostly.”
Chloe stared out the dark window.
“The man who created the trust.”
“Yes.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It made perfect sense to him.”
“How?”
“He cared about the family name more than any person carrying it.”
Victoria thought of Julian dismissing her fear as pregnancy anxiety.
Families taught their children what mattered.
Sometimes they taught it without ever saying the words.
Mara continued.
“My grandfather believed publicity would damage the businesses and make Camille less likely to be returned.”
“Did he believe she’d been kidnapped?”
“At first.”
“And later?”
Mara’s silence answered.
Chloe turned back toward the phone.
“What did he think happened?”
“He thought Richard knew.”
A knock sounded at the hospital room door.
An officer stepped inside.
Not Reynolds.
A woman in plain clothes wearing a badge at her belt.
“Victoria Vance?”
Victoria nodded.
The woman looked toward the phone.
“Are you speaking with Mara Klein?”
Mara heard her.
“Yes.”
The detective introduced herself as Lena Ortiz.
“Mara, I need you to stay available.”
Ortiz looked at Victoria.
“We secured the basement.”
Victoria’s stomach tightened.
“What did you find?”
The detective did not answer immediately.
“Before I tell you that, I need to know whether you recognize the name Leah Hart.”
“Yes.”
“From tonight?”
“Yes.”
Ortiz nodded.
“Did you know her before tonight?”
“No.”
The detective looked toward Chloe.
“Did you?”
Chloe shook her head.
Ortiz took a folded sheet of paper from a clear evidence sleeve.
“We found this taped beneath a shelf in the utility room.”
She did not hand it over.
Victoria could see faded handwriting through the plastic.
Chloe stepped closer.
“What is it?”
Ortiz looked at her.
“A letter.”
“From who?”
“We’re still establishing that.”
Chloe stared at the page.
Then her face changed.
She pointed at the signature near the bottom.
“I know that handwriting.”
Ortiz looked at her.
“Whose?”
Chloe’s voice barely carried.
“My mother’s.”
Victoria looked at the final line visible through the sleeve.
The ink was old, but the words could still be read.
If Camille ever comes back, Richard will kill her before he lets the truth come with her.
Chloe read the sentence twice.
Then she looked at Detective Ortiz.
“What truth?”
Ortiz slid the evidence sleeve back into a folder.
“That’s what we’re trying to determine.”
Chloe laughed without humor.
May you like
“You found a letter from my mother saying my father would kill a missing child, and that’s all you’ve got?”
“It’s what we can say right now.”
