Chapter 16 - The Camera Above the Garage
The clue came from something my father had installed.
A security camera.
Not inside the house.
Above the garage.
Evan hated it.
Margaret called it ugly.
My father insisted we keep it because our neighborhood had experienced package theft.
Four months earlier, on the night Margaret used my phone, the camera recorded every vehicle entering and leaving.
Dana obtained the archived footage from the security company.
At 9:17 p.m., Margaret’s Mercedes arrived.
At 11:06 p.m., another car pulled into our driveway.
A black sedan.
Gerald Knox stepped out.
The same notary whose stamp appeared on the forged postnuptial agreement.
He entered through the side door.
He stayed twenty-eight minutes.
I had been asleep upstairs.
Evan had been on a business trip.
Margaret later told me Gerald had never visited our home.
Now we knew she lied.
But the outside camera could not show what happened inside.
Then Evan remembered our old baby monitor.
When Maisie was an infant, we had used a Wi-Fi camera in the living room.
Months later, I moved it to a bookshelf and forgot about it.
It was supposed to have been disconnected.
It was not.
The cloud account still existed.
Rachel and I spent hours searching.
Most recordings had been automatically deleted after thirty days.
But motion-triggered clips marked as “saved events” remained.
One clip had been preserved because the camera detected repeated movement.
Date.
Four months earlier.
Time.
11:14 p.m.
Dana opened it.
The image showed our living room.
I was asleep on the couch.
Margaret sat beside me.
My phone was in her hand.
Gerald stood behind her.
I watched Margaret lift my phone.
She held it six inches from my sleeping face.
The screen unlocked.
Gerald whispered.
“Again.”
Margaret moved the phone closer.
Then she smiled.
“Done.”
I felt Rachel squeeze my shoulder.
The video continued.
Gerald opened a folder.
Margaret signed something.
Then he stamped it.
My forged postnuptial agreement.
Clear.
Visible.
Recorded.
Dana exhaled slowly.
“Well.”
“What?”
“I think Margaret just solved our authentication problem.”
The police were notified.
So was the bank.
Gerald Knox stopped answering his phone.
By evening, Margaret’s attorney had withdrawn from representing her in the financial matter.
But Patricia did not disappear.
Instead, she called Evan.
He put the conversation on speaker.
“Your mother wants to see you.”
“Why?”
“She says she has something Claire needs to see.”
“What?”
Patricia paused.
“Your father’s will.”
Evan went completely still.
May you like
His father had been dead for twelve years.
And according to Evan, there had never been a will.
