Part 3
“Don’t leave.”
He stayed.
A county detective arrived shortly after midnight. Her name was Dana Morales, and she spoke without the false softness some people used around injured adults. She asked Laurel whether Marcus could remain in the room.
Laurel looked at him before answering. “Yes.”
Morales took a chair near the foot of the bed and began with what Laurel remembered before the injury. The questions were simple. The answers were not.
Laurel said she had told Nolan that afternoon she was leaving the estate. She had packed a small suitcase and arranged for a car to pick her up after dinner. Nolan discovered the reservation. He took her phone, dismissed the house staff early, and locked the conservatory doors while they argued.
“Locked how?” Morales asked.
“From the wall panel. The doors are part of the security system.”
“Could you unlock them from inside?”
“Normally. He changed the access.”
Marcus looked down at his hands.
Morales continued. “How did you get injured?”
Laurel’s breathing changed. “I tried to get past him.”
“Did he strike you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you don’t remember?”
“I remember his hand on my arm. I remember the chair moving. I remember the edge of something.” She touched the bandage above her eyebrow and stopped. “Then I was on the floor.”
“Did he prevent you from getting up?”
“He told me to stay there until I could speak like an adult.”
Marcus shifted in his chair.
Laurel heard it. Her eyes opened. “Don’t.”
He kept quiet.
Morales asked whether Nolan had threatened her.
“Not exactly.”
“What did he say?”
“He said no one would believe the story I was planning to tell. He said people already knew I was unstable.”
“Are you?”
Laurel stared at the detective.
Morales did not look away. “I’m asking because his attorney may ask. Medical treatment, diagnoses, prescriptions—those things can be used to distract from what happened, even when they don’t explain it.”
“I had panic attacks after my mother died,” Laurel said. “I saw a therapist. I took medication for a while. I have never imagined a locked door.”
Marcus looked toward the dark window. He had known about the panic attacks. He had not known about the therapist or the medication. At the time, he had believed giving Laurel space was a form of restraint. Now the word seemed cowardly.
Morales asked about the reason Laurel intended to leave.
Laurel glanced at Marcus. “That isn’t necessary for tonight.”
“It may establish motive.”
“It will also involve people who can make this difficult.”
“They can make it difficult either way.”
Laurel’s mouth tightened. “I found documents in Nolan’s office. Loan guarantees and transfer authorizations with my signature on them. I didn’t sign them.”
Marcus lifted his head.
Morales asked, “Do you have copies?”
“I photographed them.”
“Where are the photographs?”
“On the phone he took.”
The detective wrote something in her notebook. “Where is the phone now?”
“I don’t know.”
Marcus finally spoke. “It was not in the conservatory.”
Morales turned to him. “You’re certain?”
“I looked near her before the paramedics moved her. I saw the chair, the glass on the side table, the transmitter I dropped. No phone.”
“Did you search the room?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Marcus did not appreciate the word but understood it.
Morales asked for his account of the confrontation. He described entering through the open door, finding Laurel on the floor, Nolan’s warning, the grab at his jacket, the defensive turn into the padded chair, and the transmitter falling onto the marble. He did not enlarge Nolan’s movement or minimize his own. The detective asked whether he had struck Nolan.
“No.”
“Threatened him?”
“No.”
“Why were you carrying an emergency transmitter?”
“I run disaster-recovery crews in areas with poor service. I keep one in the truck. Celeste’s message told me not to call, and the estate road loses reception near the lake, so I clipped it on before I left.”
Morales paused. “What exactly did Mrs. Ashford send?”
Marcus handed over his phone.
The message was still visible beneath the rain alerts he had ignored.
COME NOW. DON’T CALL. LAUREL NEEDS YOU.
Morales read it twice, photographed the screen, and gave the phone back.
“Where is Mrs. Ashford?”
“I don’t know.”
“She left the estate before officers completed interviews,” Morales said. “One of the security employees said she was shaken and insisted she needed air. Her car passed the north gate at twelve seventeen.”
Marcus looked at the clock. It was twelve thirty-eight.
Laurel’s eyes closed again. “She always leaves when it becomes real.”
The physician returned to place four small stitches above Laurel’s eyebrow. Marcus watched the doctor’s hands because watching Laurel’s face felt intrusive. She did not cry. Her fingers pinched the edge of the hospital blanket each time the needle passed through skin. When it was over, she let out a breath and said she was cold.
Marcus found another blanket. He unfolded it badly and had to turn it around.
“You still can’t do corners,” she murmured.
He looked at her.
She opened one eye. “Blankets. Sheets. Anything rectangular.”
A laugh escaped him before he could decide whether it was appropriate. Laurel did not laugh with him, but some of the tension left her hand.
A nurse brought water and crackers. Laurel managed half a cracker, then placed the rest on the paper wrapper. Marcus drank coffee from a machine in the hallway. It tasted burned and faintly of plastic. He drank it anyway.
At one fourteen, a hospital administrator asked to speak with him outside the room. Nolan’s attorney had called the hospital seeking information about Laurel’s condition and asking whether she was capable of making medical decisions. The administrator had disclosed nothing but wanted Laurel to know.
Marcus returned to the room and told her.
“He’s trying to build the story already,” Laurel said.
“What story?”
“That he was protecting me from myself.”
May you like
“Does he have any authority over your care?”
“No. We never signed anything like that.” She hesitated. “Unless he forged that too.”
