Chapter 8 - Someone Came Back Into the BasementOfficer Brooks returned at 12:47 a.m.
This time she brought another officer.
David explained the missing recorder while Margaret described exactly where she had hidden it.
Brooks examined the freezer.
“There’s no sign of forced entry.”
“The door wasn’t locked after we got her out.”
“So anyone inside the house could have accessed it.”
David looked toward Mark.
Mark lifted both hands.
“I didn’t take anything.”
Brooks studied him.
“Who are you?”
“Mark Ellison.”
David answered for him.
“My wife’s boyfriend.”
Mark’s face tightened.
“And possibly the person who created the company receiving my mother’s money.”
Brooks’s attention sharpened.
“What company?”
Mark looked at David.
“You said you wouldn’t—”
“I never promised you anything.”
Brooks separated them.
Mark eventually agreed to answer questions but insisted he had not entered the freezer.
David believed almost nothing he said.
Yet one detail complicated matters.
The security system showed Mark arriving through the front door camera at 10:13 p.m.
The wet prints inside the freezer had partially dried.
They might have been older.
They might even have belonged to Vanessa.
Except Margaret was certain the recorder had been hidden behind the fish before Vanessa shut the door.
If Vanessa had retrieved it afterward, when?
She had been upstairs when David arrived.
Then David followed her downstairs almost immediately.
After the rescue, paramedics and police were everywhere.
Unless someone else had already been in the house.
Officer Brooks asked who had keys.
David started listing names.
Himself.
Vanessa.
Margaret had one.
Rachel had an emergency key, but she lived forty minutes away.
The housekeeper.
The landscaping company had access to an exterior garage code.
Then he remembered.
“Mark.”
Everyone looked at him.
Mark’s expression changed.
“You have a key.”
“Not anymore.”
“You had one after my father died.”
“You changed the locks.”
“Did we?”
Mark said nothing.
David suddenly remembered giving him a spare key during the funeral period.
The locks had not been changed until the smart system installation.
But the rear mudroom still had an older mechanical deadbolt.
“Do you still have it?”
“No.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Officer Brooks asked, “Could someone have copied it?”
Mark looked offended.
“Sure. Anyone could copy a key.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
David noticed Margaret staring at Mark.
“What?”
She shook her head.
“Mom?”
“I saw him.”
Mark looked at her.
“When?”
“Last month.”
“Where?”
“In the kitchen.”
Mark frowned.
“I come here all the time.”
“No.”
Margaret shook her head.
“At night.”
David felt another chill.
“What night?”
“When you were in Denver.”
Mark said quickly, “Vanessa invited me over.”
The room went silent.
Nobody needed an explanation.
David looked away.
His own house.
His own bed, perhaps.
Mark continued, embarrassed.
“I left before midnight.”
Margaret stared at him.
“No, you didn’t.”
Mark frowned.
“You came back.”
“I didn’t.”
“I saw you.”
“When?”
“After two.”
Mark’s face went blank.
David watched carefully.
“I was asleep,” Margaret said. “I heard the back door. I looked downstairs.”
Mark shook his head.
“That wasn’t me.”
“I know your face.”
“It wasn’t me.”
Margaret became agitated.
“You were carrying something.”
“What?”
“A black case.”
Mark looked genuinely confused.
“I don’t own a black case.”
David exchanged a glance with Brooks.
She asked Margaret to describe it.
Small.
Hard-sided.
Like a briefcase but narrower.
The figure had moved from the rear door toward Vanessa’s office.
Margaret had assumed it was Mark.
Now Mark insisted he had been gone.
“Was Vanessa home?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hear them speak?”
“No.”
Brooks wrote everything down.
Then David asked the question bothering him.
“If it wasn’t Mark, who looked enough like him for Mom to think it was?”
Mark’s face slowly changed.
He knew something.
David saw it.
“Who?”
Mark rubbed a hand over his mouth.
“Vanessa has a brother.”
David stared.
“I know.”
Andrew Blake.
Forty-two.
Older than Vanessa by eight years.
David had met him only a handful of times.
Andrew lived in Nevada.
Or supposedly did.
“Andrew looks nothing like Mark.”
“Not really,” Mark said. “But same height. Similar build.”
David frowned.
“When did you last see him?”
“About two months ago.”
“Where?”
Mark hesitated.
David’s voice sharpened.
“Where?”
“At Vanessa’s apartment.”
“What apartment?”
Silence.
David stepped forward.
“What apartment, Mark?”
Mark closed his eyes briefly.
“She rented a place downtown.”
David stared.
“When?”
“I don’t know. A few months ago.”
“Why?”
“She said she needed privacy.”
“For the affair?”
“At first.”
“And later?”
Mark looked toward Officer Brooks.
“I think Andrew was staying there.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was sleeping with your wife, David. I wasn’t exactly making good decisions.”
Brooks asked for the address.
Mark provided it.
Then his phone buzzed again.
He looked down.
Unknown number.
David reached for it.
Mark showed him willingly this time.
A photograph filled the screen.
David’s front porch.
Taken from across the street.
Taken minutes earlier.
Someone was watching the house.
Below the photograph were five words.
You should have stayed quiet.
Officer Brooks immediately moved toward the window.
David looked past her into the darkness outside.
Nothing.
No car.
No visible person.
Then Margaret whispered from behind him.
“Andrew.”
David turned.
She was trembling.
“You’ve seen him here before?”
Margaret nodded.
“Once.”
“When?”
Her voice cracked.
“The night Vanessa told me David wanted me gone.”
Mark looked confused.
David moved closer.
“What did Andrew do?”
May you like
Margaret’s eyes filled with terror.
“He measured my bedroom.”
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