Chapter 13 - THE SECOND COPY
Cedric refused to believe Eleanor kept only one copy.
“She hid a letter in a cabinet for eighteen months,” he said. “She planned ahead.”
Flora nodded.
“Your mother never trusted one hiding place.”
They searched Eleanor’s rooms.
Nothing.
Then Maisie wandered toward the shattered vase pieces still boxed by police.
“Can I see the pretty dragon?”
Alonzo almost said no.
Flora stopped him.
“The vase.”
Cedric looked at her.
Eleanor had insisted that vase remain in the ballroom after a renovation.
Flora examined the largest base fragment.
Something metallic was sealed inside the porcelain.
Mara carefully broke away another layer.
A memory card dropped out.
For a moment nobody touched it. The tiny black card looked absurdly ordinary beside fragments of porcelain that had been insured for more than most people earned in ten years. Yet Cedric understood that the cheapest object on the floor might now be the most valuable thing his family owned.
Maisie smiled.
“The vase had a secret too.”
Cedric inserted the card into a secure laptop.
Eleanor appeared on screen.
She looked tired but completely lucid.
“If you are watching this, Frances has probably told you I became unstable.”
Cedric’s eyes burned.
Eleanor named the Project Orchid accounts.
She described Graham’s debt.
Martin’s legal work.
Samuel Vale’s medical pressure.
Then she said, “Frances controls Orchid now.”
Alonzo leaned closer.
Eleanor continued.
“Sofia Reyes discovered it. She brought me the evidence. I told her to wait forty-eight hours while I secured copies.”
Alonzo’s face tightened.
“She never got forty-eight hours.”
Eleanor’s voice broke.
“Sofia died the next night.”
Then came the line that silenced everyone.
“I believe Frances ordered the driver to frighten Sofia, not kill her. But intention does not make a dead woman less dead.”
Alonzo closed his eyes.
Eleanor looked straight into the camera.
“And if anything happens to me, the man who can prove it is still alive.”
She gave a name.
Samuel Vale.
May you like
Portia’s uncle.
The doctor had disappeared the morning of the wedding.
