Chapter 6 - DETECTIVE RAMIREZ
Detective Elena Ramirez arrived before sunrise.
She didn’t treat me like a frightened pregnant woman imagining conspiracies.
She treated me like a witness.
That mattered.
I showed her everything.
Daniel’s video.
The messages.
The financial transfers.
The photograph of Ethan beside my car.
Ramirez watched the stairway footage twice.
“Who else has copies?”
“My neighbor.”
“Good.”
“My aunt.”
“Better.”
She paused the video at the moment Ethan nodded.
“Do you know what he was signaling?”
“No.”
“You sure he was looking at his mother?”
“Yes.”
Ramirez nodded slowly.
“We’ll need the original footage.”
“I can call Daniel.”
“We already have someone going to him.”
I stared at her.
“You believe me?”
“I believe evidence.”
Best answer she could have given.
By 8:00 a.m., officers were at Margaret’s house.
But there was a problem.
Margaret had already cleaned the staircase.
The baby clothes were gone.
The box was gone.
Even a cracked piece of the banister had been replaced.
“She cleaned up overnight?” I asked.
Ramirez nodded.
“Someone did.”
“Why would innocent people do that?”
Her expression said exactly what I was thinking.
They wouldn’t.
Ethan called nine times.
I answered the tenth.
“Where are you?” he demanded.
“In the hospital.”
“Police are at Mom’s.”
“I know.”
“Did you call them?”
“Yes.”
“Claire, what the hell are you doing?”
I almost laughed.
“What am I doing?”
“You’re turning this into something it isn’t.”
“What is it, Ethan?”
“A terrible accident.”
“Then why did you ask Daniel to shut off his camera?”
Silence.
There it was.
The moment he realized Daniel hadn’t obeyed him.
“What are you talking about?”
“Stop lying.”
“Claire—”
“Why did you want his camera off?”
“I didn’t.”
“I have the recording.”
Another pause.
Then Ethan’s voice changed.
Lower.
Colder.
“You need to think very carefully about what you do next.”
I looked at Ramirez.
She gestured for me to keep him talking.
“Is that a threat?”
“No.”
“It sounds like one.”
“I’m telling you that once police get involved, you can’t control where this goes.”
“You mean where it goes for you.”
He exhaled sharply.
“Send me the video.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“No.”
Then Ethan said something that stopped me cold.
“Your father wasn’t the man you thought he was.”
I tightened my grip on the phone.
“What does my father have to do with this?”
“Everything.”
The line went dead.
Ten minutes later, Rebecca burst into my room.
Her face was white.
“Claire, the trust documents have been altered.”
“What?”
She put a folder on my bed.
“Someone replaced two pages years ago.”
“When?”
Rebecca looked at me.
May you like
“The week before you married Ethan.”
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