Chapter 8 - The Missing Pictures
The camera footage was not gone.
The normal archive showed six minutes of darkness, but a separate event buffer had retained fragments from the driveway camera and the service-corridor system.
Roman discovered the backup while checking whether an equipment update had overwritten the recordings.
He called Detective Clarke before he called me.
I appreciated that.
A lawyer could argue that my security staff had manipulated a file if we handled it carelessly.
Clarke brought a technician to make verified copies and document their origin.
Only after that did we watch what could be recovered.
The video began with the garden behind the mansion, peaceful beneath strings of warm lights.
Guests moved past the glass doors, and waiters carried champagne toward the lawn.
At two fifty-one, a man in a gray jacket entered through the maintenance gate.
He was carrying a dark bag.
Clarke compared the image with the visitor photograph and confirmed that the man appeared to be Evan Kline, the contractor whose name stood on the unexpected work order.
The recording showed him walking toward the pergola.
It did not show him damaging the swing.
I forced myself to say that aloud, because the distinction mattered.
Five minutes later, Victoria entered the frame.
Her crimson gown was impossible to miss.
She paused beneath the pergola, spoke to Kline, and handed him something narrow and pale.
The camera angle made it impossible to identify the object.
Kline slipped it into his jacket.
Victoria looked toward the mansion windows.
Then she walked back inside, and the service corridor camera captured her meeting a woman from the event-planning team.
The woman tapped a tablet and moved toward the lighting controls.
Seconds later, the garden feed went dark.
"What did she give him?"
I asked.
Clarke shook his head.
"We need the original recording examined.
Guessing won't improve it."
I clenched my jaw.
The evidence showed contact and timing, not motive or mechanics.
Victoria could claim she was paying a contractor or giving him instructions about party decorations.
But the coincidence of her location, the camera interruption, the swing collapse, and her knowledge of the left hook was becoming harder to explain innocently.
I watched the recovered footage twice more and noticed something I had missed: Victoria's expression changed before she reentered the ballroom.
She looked over her shoulder toward the garden as though counting minutes.
The woman with the tablet was Nora Benson, a freelance event coordinator hired through Victoria's preferred agency.
She was twenty-nine, recently divorced, and responsible for supervising lighting cues during the party.
Clarke interviewed her at the station.
Nora acknowledged that she had processed a request to disable the garden feed temporarily, but she said Victoria assured her it was for a surprise portrait reveal.
She was frightened when investigators asked about Kline, yet she insisted she had not known the swing would be used.
Her attorney provided work messages showing that Victoria had described the request as a harmless adjustment.
Those messages did not clear Nora of every responsibility, but they showed how easily a larger plan could hide behind routine instructions.
Nora was embarrassed that she had not questioned the request.
"I wanted to keep a difficult client happy," she told the detective.
"She kept saying the Bellini name could open doors for me."
Her words sounded painfully familiar.
My name had been used to make people surrender judgment.
I had once taken pride in the fact that contractors worked hard to impress us.
Now I wondered how often that pressure had encouraged them to ignore what seemed wrong.
Clarke made clear that Nora's account would be checked against records and other witnesses.
He was not offering her immunity for a convenient story.
The recovered driveway footage showed Kline leaving through the maintenance gate after the accident.
His bag appeared lighter than when he arrived, but the picture was too distant to show why.
A black sedan waited at the curb.
When the sedan pulled away, the rear plate was partially visible.
Roman recognized the vehicle as one used by a transport company that served several downtown offices, including Northbridge Project Partners.
That connection opened another trail for investigators.
Maya began assembling the business records the foundation was entitled to examine, while Clarke requested the transport logs independently.
I went to see my mother with a printed still from the footage.
She studied Victoria standing under the pergola, her red gown bright against the hedges.
"She looks as though she's organizing flowers," Sofia said.
"That's what frightens me.
I thought she was helping us celebrate."
I told her that we still did not have definitive proof of sabotage.
She nodded.
"Then don't make up the rest.
If she did this, the truth will be ugly enough."
My mother's restraint was not forgiveness.
She wanted accountability that could endure beyond our anger.
Later that evening, I found an unsigned envelope beneath the library door.
It contained a copy of an invoice from Harrow Garden Services to Northbridge, marked for a "special event adjustment."
The invoice date preceded our engagement party by two days.
The amount was far larger than ordinary maintenance work would justify, and a reference number matched one of the payments Sofia had questioned.
There was no note, no explanation, and no indication of who had delivered the page.
I photographed the envelope and called Clarke before handling it further.
Someone with access to business records was trying to tell us where to look.
My first instinct was to suspect Nora.
My second was to suspect the mystery person I had glimpsed beyond the garden windows when Victoria looked outside.
But when Clarke asked who else could access invoices through Northbridge, Maya supplied a list of accounting staff, vendors, and executives.
The list was longer than I liked.
It included a man named Grant Vale, Victoria's cousin, who was registered as a managing partner of Northbridge and had attended our engagement party.
I remembered him standing near the doors when Victoria tried to flee.
He had been holding a glass of whiskey, looking remarkably calm.
The following morning, Clarke called with news that Grant Vale had booked a flight to leave the country.
That was not a crime, he reminded me, but it created urgency for reviewing records.
Maya filed a preservation notice through the appropriate legal channels.
I ordered no one to intercept him.
If our evidence was strong, the authorities would decide what action to take.
May you like
While I spoke, another message reached the foundation's office: someone had attempted to withdraw the disputed Northbridge payment using Sofia's electronic authorization.
The request was rejected, but it confirmed that whoever wanted the money had not stopped trying.
