Chapter 3 - Emily Remembers The Locked Study
At the hospital, toxicology confirmed Emily had been given a sedative.
The amount was dangerous but not fatal.
Daniel sat beside her bed.
“You don’t have to remember everything tonight.”
Emily shook her head.
“I need to.”
She had arrived early to help Margaret prepare for the anniversary celebration.
While looking for table cards, she heard voices inside Charles Whitmore’s old study.
Margaret was arguing with someone.
Emily recognized one sentence.
“You promised nobody would touch her.”
Then the door opened.
Margaret looked terrified to see Emily there.
She told Emily the study was off-limits.
Emily walked away.
But ten minutes later, she saw Victor carrying the black equipment case through the east hall.
Victor was Margaret’s private security consultant.
That made him look guilty.
Emily followed him.
Victor entered the communications room.
When he left, Emily slipped inside and found the phone.
She saw recordings of guests.
Bank documents.
Photographs of Daniel.
Photographs of herself.
Then someone entered behind her.
Emily remembered a hand over her mouth.
A sharp chemical smell.
After that, fragments.
The marble floor.
Victor shouting.
Margaret crying.
Daniel arriving.
“Did you see who grabbed you?” Daniel asked.
Emily closed her eyes.
“No.”
Daniel did not push.
Police questioned Victor separately.
He admitted installing surveillance equipment.
Margaret had hired him three months earlier.
Why?
According to Victor, Margaret believed someone was stealing from the Whitmore family foundation.
She wanted evidence before telling Daniel.
Daniel stared at him.
“You secretly recorded my daughter.”
“I recorded common areas.”
“You photographed her arrival and labeled her a target.”
Victor looked genuinely confused.
“I never wrote that.”
Investigators checked the photograph.
The handwriting did not match Victor’s.
Then they found something more troubling.
Victor’s access card showed he left the communications room at 4:26.
Emily entered at 4:31.
The sedative attack happened around 4:38.
Victor had been on an exterior camera at that time.
He could not have been the person behind Emily.
Daniel looked toward Margaret.
She had accused Victor immediately.
May you like
Too immediately.
And now he wanted to know why.
