The Woman Everyone Blamed
Chapter 02 - The Woman Everyone Blamed
Paramedics carried Grace from the estate while cameras crowded the front drive.
Doctors confirmed that both Grace and the baby were stable, but she would remain under observation. The fall had triggered early contractions.
Ryan stayed beside her until security chief Marcus Hale called from the mansion.
The official staircase camera showed Vanessa following Grace onto the landing. Then the feed cut out three seconds before the railing broke.
When the picture returned, Grace was already falling.
Eleanor demanded Vanessa’s arrest.
“She lured Grace upstairs. Everyone saw it.”
Vanessa did not run.
She sat inside the library with two police officers and refused to answer questions until Ryan arrived.
When he entered, she placed a silver screw on the table.
“I found this beneath the railing.”
The screw had been cut almost completely through.
“You expect me to believe you happened to find it?” Ryan asked.
“I knew someone planned to frame me.”
“For what?”
Vanessa opened her evening bag and removed a file.
Inside were photographs of Eleanor meeting with contractor Paul Drake near the estate staircase three nights earlier. Drake had recently renovated the railing.
Vanessa had spent six months investigating missing company pension funds. The trail led to Eleanor and several directors.
“I sent Grace the note,” Vanessa admitted. “But I asked her to meet me in the archive, not on the staircase.”
Ryan’s anger sharpened.
“You used my pregnant wife as part of an investigation.”
“I believed the danger was financial.”
“You believed wrong.”
Vanessa accepted the words.
Then she showed him the envelope in which the note had been delivered.
The handwriting imitated hers, but the paper carried a faint watermark from Sterling’s executive office.
Ryan recognized the stationery.
Only Eleanor and the board secretary used it.
Detective Lena Ortiz entered with another discovery.
The chandelier camera Grace mentioned was not listed in the estate security plan.
It had been installed twenty-nine years earlier by Samuel Ellis, the missing co-founder.
Its cable ran behind the archive wall.
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Someone had tried to disconnect it that morning.
The system was still recording.
