Chapter 7 - THE ROOM WITHOUT A WINDOW
The storage room had no real window.
The small glass panel faced the hallway.
The only outside air came through a vent near the ceiling.
Police photographed the interior.
A blanket.
A plate.
An empty glass.
A bucket behind stacked boxes.
Andrew had walked through the mansion hundreds of times without opening that door.
The room existed fifteen seconds from his kitchen.
His mother had suffered within shouting distance of luxury.
Detective Lillian Shaw arrived from the Atlanta Police Department’s vulnerable-adult unit.
She examined the new lock.
“It was installed four months ago.”
Andrew checked his travel calendar.
Four months earlier, he left for a business conference in Singapore.
Natalie sent him photographs of Margaret sitting in the garden.
The images had no date information.
“She told me my mother enjoyed the sunshine every morning.”
Detective Shaw looked toward the sealed vent.
“Someone wanted you to believe what happened in this house without verifying it.”
Andrew entered the storage room alone.
He sat on the chair beside Margaret’s wheelchair.
From that position, he could see the family photograph.
He could reach the lamp.
He could not reach the door.
The wheelchair’s footrests struck a stack of boxes before getting close enough.
His mother had rolled forward each time she heard movement.
Then she knocked.
Natalie could look through the glass without opening the door.
On the wall beside the table were tiny pencil lines.
Thirty-seven.
Margaret had counted the days she was locked inside.
Not consecutive days.
Incidents.
Andrew touched the final mark.
It was darker than the others.
Made recently.
Detective Shaw discovered fibers on the wheelchair belt.
They matched Natalie’s emerald dress.
That did not prove she tightened it.
But it contradicted her claim that she never entered the room.
Andrew opened one of the old boxes.
Inside were Christmas decorations.
His childhood toys.
A wooden train Thomas built for him.
Margaret had been imprisoned among the pieces of Andrew’s past.
He picked up the train.
Beneath it lay a luxury heel with a broken tip.
Dark emerald fabric clung to it.
Natalie had left part of her shoe inside the room.
Andrew remembered seeing her at dinner two weeks earlier.
She complained that a heel broke while shopping.
He had ordered a replacement pair.
Detective Shaw placed the shoe in an evidence bag.
Then an officer called from the front entrance.
A woman stood outside the gates.
She had been watching the police search the mansion.
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Her name was Selena Brooks.
And she said Natalie had tried to kill Margaret once before.
