Chapter 3 - The Little Red Camera
I showed Detective Shaw the message before I answered it.
She read it once, asked whether Lily owned a phone, and waited while I explained that the number belonged to the housekeeper, Mrs. Bell.
Lily sometimes borrowed it to send us pictures of her rabbit.
Tonight, she had sent something else.
Shaw went inside with Ortiz. We waited beneath the porch lights while the estate's beautiful windows reflected a driveway full of emergency vehicles.
Miriam kept looking at the upstairs curtain.
“She's afraid,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Then why are we standing here?”
Because being grandparents didn't make us investigators. Because rushing inside might frighten Lily further. Because every instinct I possessed was trying to become an excuse.
I squeezed her hand.
“They're going to her.”
Ten minutes later, Ortiz brought Lily outside with Mrs. Bell. Our granddaughter had changed into jeans, but she still wore her party shoes. One buckle hung open.
Miriam knelt despite her bad knee.
Lily ran into her arms.
“Did the roof fall on you?” she asked.
“No, sweetheart,” Miriam said. “We're right here.”
Lily touched my face, as if checking the answer herself.
Then she began to cry.
Shaw didn't question her in the driveway. She arranged for a specialist to speak with her later and asked us to avoid discussing what she might have seen.
Eric consented to Lily staying with us at Adrian's while investigators sorted out the immediate situation. Vanessa objected until her attorney arrived and drew her aside.
I watched my son sign the temporary arrangement.
His pen shook.
“Take care of her,” he said.
Miriam answered before I could.
“We always have.”
The little red camera turned out to be a children's action camera Adrian had given Lily for her birthday. She attached it to her bicycle, filmed her rabbit, and produced elaborate documentaries about puddles.
That afternoon, she had mounted it on a garden trellis to record preparations for her mother's party.
The camera was no longer on the trellis.
Mrs. Bell had found Lily trying to hide it beneath her mattress after Vanessa demanded every recording device in the house.
Shaw took possession of it with the housekeeper's account documented. An evidence bag swallowed the cheerful red plastic.
Lily watched it go.
Her small hands opened and closed against her jeans. I recognized the movement because Eric had done the same thing before his first school play. The resemblance hurt, but it also reminded me that Lily was not evidence of her parents' failures. She was a child with her own unfinished story. Whatever investigators discovered, whatever newspapers printed, I wanted her to remember that somebody had noticed her fear before asking what she knew. Miriam seemed to understand without a word. She wrapped her sweater around Lily's shoulders and waited beside her.
“Will I get it back?”
“They'll take good care of it,” Miriam said.
At Adrian's house, we made grilled cheese because nobody wanted the casserole his neighbor brought. Lily ate half a sandwich, then asked whether broken buildings could be fixed.
“Sometimes,” I said.
“What if someone broke them on purpose?”
I set down my glass.
“Then we find out what happened. And we make sure people are safe.”
She considered that.
“Even if it's somebody we love?”
Miriam reached across the table.
“Especially then.”
We put her to bed in Adrian's guest room, surrounded by pillows and a rabbit borrowed from his daughter's old toy chest.
Only after she slept did my older son show us the latest financial summary.
The missing money had passed through three companies. Crescent was one. Another had paid a renovation contractor named Nolan Price.
Price was the man beneath the steel.
“He survived surgery,” Adrian said. “That's all the hospital would confirm through the detective.”
I stared at the company names.
“Why the Buick?” Miriam asked.
The question had followed me all evening.
“Maybe recognition,” I said. “Something easy to identify from a distance.”
It was a possibility, nothing more. We passed it to Shaw.
At eleven, she called back.
“We've secured the camera footage. There is a conversation we need your son Eric to explain.”
“Which conversation?”
May you like
A pause.
“He tells someone, 'My parents won't survive that.'”
