Chapter 7 - The Assistant Who Disappeared
Lydia Cross did not look like someone who had helped plan a violent crime.
When I saw her across the small interview room, she seemed younger than the competent assistant who had once managed Vanessa's schedule with effortless precision.
Her hair was pulled into an uneven ponytail, and she kept rubbing a thumb along the seam of her coat.
Detective Ortega had arranged for us to meet only after Lydia agreed, and she warned us not to ask questions that might interfere with the formal interview.
My father came with me, but I asked him to sit quietly.
Lydia looked at my bruised shoulder and began to cry.
"I never thought she'd hurt you," she said.
I did not know whether I believed her.
She explained that Vanessa had asked her to create a temporary privacy configuration for the reception.
She said the balcony camera needed to be disabled because a donor wanted an off-record conversation in the upstairs lounge.
Lydia had received written instructions and a tablet already connected to the system.
She had never been trained as a security technician.
Vanessa told her the household contractor had approved the procedure.
"I knew it sounded strange," Lydia admitted.
"But when I questioned her, she said people who challenged her didn't last long."
After the party, Vanessa called her before sunrise and demanded that she wipe the tablet and return it through the service entrance.
Lydia followed those orders, then resigned because she feared being blamed for the missing video.
She had kept copies of the messages on a separate personal device because she had begun documenting Vanessa's threats months earlier.
Her attorney supplied those messages to Ortega, who would verify their authenticity independently.
"Why didn't you tell someone that night?" I asked.
Lydia looked at my father.
"Because everybody believed her."
I wanted to argue that Marcus would have listened, but I remembered how often I had remained silent for the same reason.
She showed Ortega a message from Vanessa sent shortly before the camera outage.
It asked Lydia to make sure the upstairs corridor was clear and the recording stopped for exactly fifteen minutes.
Another instructed her not to discuss the arrangement with Daniel.
A third, sent after my fall, read: The accident changes nothing. Destroy the notes and forget our conversation.
The message made my father visibly pale.
Ortega did not allow him to take the phone or contact Vanessa.
She explained that investigators needed to preserve the original messages and understand their context.
The distinction between what Lydia had been ordered to do and what she knew about the intended violence would matter.
Lydia also told us she had heard Vanessa arguing with Grant Bell in the study before guests arrived.
She remembered Vanessa saying that the trustee wanted a witnessed original and that she could not let me see the final packet.
Grant had responded that the paperwork could wait another week.
Vanessa said it could not.
"She said something about the girl turning twenty-two," Lydia recalled.
That detail made Helen alert.
My birthday was in six weeks, when an existing trust provision would give me a wider role in reviewing accounts and requesting information.
Vanessa had apparently been working against a deadline.
I looked at my father.
He had not remembered that provision, although my mother had insisted on it years before.
It was another safeguard designed by a woman who had known me more completely than the people now fighting over her legacy.
Lydia asked if my father would protect her job references.
He replied that her employment circumstances would be handled through independent human resources procedures, not personal promises made in exchange for testimony.
I was surprised by his answer.
A week earlier he might have offered her money just to make the problem disappear.
Now he understood that people needed to tell the truth without feeling purchased.
Lydia reached for a tissue and apologized again before she left the room.
I told her I could not forgive something I did not yet fully understand.
That answer made her flinch, but it was more honest than reassuring her simply because she was crying.
I said I was grateful she had come forward and that she should tell investigators everything, including anything that might make her own decisions look worse.
She nodded and said she had started writing down incidents months earlier because Vanessa made her doubt her memory.
The first entry described a donor invoice changed after it was approved.
Another described a temporary staff member dismissed for questioning a missing receipt.
Neither proved that Vanessa planned to hurt me, but together they suggested a workplace where people had learned that silence was safer than disagreement.
I wondered how many of us had been living under the same roof while feeling completely alone.
For the first time I saw Lydia not as a background figure from my father's parties, but as a person whose livelihood had been used to control her.
When we left, a reporter approached us outside the station.
She asked whether I had accused my father's wife of attempted murder to gain control of a family trust.
I froze at the phrasing.
It sounded exactly like Malcolm Price's letter.
My father stepped between us but did not grab the camera or raise his voice.
"We will not comment on an active investigation," he said.
I asked the reporter whether she knew who had supplied the allegation.
She declined to reveal her source.
Before we drove away, she asked whether I had ever been treated for anxiety.
I recognized the tactic immediately.
Someone wanted the public to believe my memory was unreliable before they heard my statement.
Back at June's apartment, I nearly canceled my follow-up medical appointment because I did not want another person examining me.
June reminded me that hiding would not make Vanessa's story less false.
I went, and the doctor confirmed that recovery might take time even without severe injury.
He encouraged me to describe the sleep disturbances and fear I had been experiencing.
For the first time, I accepted a referral for trauma counseling.
That evening I told my father I did not want vengeance disguised as love.
I wanted the truth established and everyone who had acted unlawfully held accountable by the proper process.
He said, "You have it."
Then his phone rang.
It was Helen, calling with a new discovery.
Grant Bell had attempted to withdraw a large amount from a Lakebridge-linked account after Vanessa was asked to leave the mansion.
May you like
The financial institution had flagged the request for further review.
Grant had suddenly stopped answering calls.
