Chapter 8 - The Woman in the Blue Dress
The first time I returned to the mansion, I could not step past the swimming pool.
The water was perfectly still, reflecting a cloudless sky, and my mind supplied the scream and the fall as though they had happened moments before.
Marcus stayed several feet away, giving me space while keeping the terrace within view.
My father had asked whether I wanted to visit at all.
I had agreed because the investigators had completed their initial scene documentation and I needed to recover certain personal belongings.
I did not intend to sleep there.
Nothing about the large windows and expensive stone could persuade me that the house was safe.
June came with us carrying an empty tote bag.
We entered through the side door and went straight to my old bedroom.
My room smelled faintly of lavender, just as it had before the party.
I found a photograph of my mother and placed it carefully in the bag.
Beside it lay a birthday card she had written when I was fourteen, shortly before she became ill.
The message reminded me that courage did not mean never being frightened.
It meant telling the truth even when fear followed.
I sat on the edge of the bed and reread it until the words blurred.
My father waited outside the door.
When I called him in, he stopped beside the bookcase and stared at the card.
"She would have known what to do," he whispered.
I shook my head.
"She would have listened before deciding."
He took that correction without protest.
We looked through a box of old photographs together.
In one, my mother stood beside the unfinished foundation of the mansion, her boots covered in mud.
She had helped choose the site and refused to let the builders cut down the oldest tree near the garden.
Vanessa once suggested replacing that tree with a sculpted fountain because it spoiled the symmetry.
My father had laughed and promised to think about it.
I had gone upstairs furious, convinced he had already forgotten why the tree mattered.
Now I told him.
"I remember," he said.
"I was pretending not to."
There were things money had allowed him to avoid, including difficult conversations and memories that could not be fixed with a check.
While we packed, Marcus received a call from Detective Ortega about a new witness.
A catering supervisor named Elise Martin had been carrying supplies through the ground-floor corridor when she heard Vanessa's voice from the balcony.
Elise did not see the initial shove, but she heard the words about getting out of the family followed by a scream and splash.
She had been afraid to report it because her company depended on referrals from wealthy clients.
After seeing the news coverage, she contacted police through her employer's legal adviser.
Her statement supported the timing and the words I remembered.
It did not replace visual evidence, but it showed I was not inventing the argument.
The investigators were also searching for a guest named Samuel Ortiz, whose phone had been pointing toward the garden during a toast.
He was filming the illuminated mansion because he admired its architecture.
He had posted a short clip online, then deleted it after receiving a legal warning claiming he had violated guest privacy.
Fortunately, an original copy remained in his cloud storage.
Samuel agreed to provide it directly to police.
We did not yet know what it showed.
My father asked whether any of this could be used to pressure Vanessa into admitting what she had done.
Ortega told him not to approach or negotiate with her.
Witnesses and recordings needed to stand on their own.
He listened.
In the hallway I passed the guest bedroom Vanessa had converted into a private dressing suite.
The door stood open, revealing rows of shoes and shelves lined with expensive handbags.
I remembered being lectured about the cost of replacing a broken drinking glass while those purchases arrived almost weekly.
Money had never been the true source of tension between us.
The problem was that she treated everything my father owned as proof that she deserved to command everyone around her.
I glanced at my reflection in the hallway mirror.
My shoulder remained tender, and there were faint marks where the railing and her grip had injured me.
Yet I no longer saw the frightened girl she described as a burden.
I saw someone who had chosen to return to a difficult place and leave again on her own terms.
I took nothing that belonged to Vanessa and touched none of the rooms under review.
The only treasures in my bag were photographs, a card, and things whose meaning no invoice could calculate.
Later, while June carried the last bag to the car, I walked to the doorway facing the balcony.
A new pane had been installed in the damaged door, but the chipped lower frame remained visible.
The decorative table had been removed after the broken vase was documented.
I could almost see Vanessa backed against the wall, her arrogance gone, my father's wet clothes dripping onto the marble.
For a moment I wondered whether that fear had taught her anything.
Then I remembered how she had sent a threatening message after the ambulance departed.
Her fear had been about consequences, not about me.
I turned away before the memory pulled me under again.
Back at June's apartment, Helen called with the results of an initial review of the Lakebridge account records.
Invoices described consulting services for a charitable project that had never been approved by the relevant board.
A proposed transfer sought to capture income belonging to the trust, but the independent trustee had stopped it.
Money from an unrelated household account appeared to have paid for expensive purchases associated with Vanessa and Grant.
Helen stressed that investigators and auditors still had to establish what those payments meant.
The next morning, Samuel's video arrived at the police evidence unit.
The first seven seconds showed guests raising champagne glasses beneath the gold-lit windows.
In the reflection of a glass wall, two figures could be seen on the second-floor balcony.
At the exact moment the camera turned toward the pool, one figure lunged toward the other.
The reflected image was distant, but there was no mistaking the sudden movement at the railing.
May you like
I had spent nights afraid that my memory would be the only witness to the shove.
Now, for the first time, the outside world had seen the beginning of what happened.
