Chapter 9: The Basement Wall
Chapter 9: The Basement Wall
Police searched Clara’s house and the carriage building.
They collected the tapes but found nothing linking her to the threat.
Clara claimed someone else had written the note to frame her.
While detectives searched upstairs, I stood in the basement staring at the floor plan.
The house had been renovated before Clara bought it.
One wall appeared thicker than the others.
I knocked against the plaster.
Most of it sounded solid.
One section sounded hollow.
Deputy Ruiz brought a contractor from the evidence team.
Behind the plaster was a narrow storage compartment.
Inside sat a fireproof metal box.
The brass key from Scout opened it.
Clara must not have known Lena had hidden a duplicate.
The box contained journals, prescription bottles, and a small video camera.
One journal belonged to Daniel.
Another belonged to Lena.
The camera still held a memory card.
The final video had been recorded on the night of the fire.
Lena’s terrified face filled the screen.
Smoke drifted behind her.
“Clara locked my bedroom door,” she whispered. “She thinks I’m inside.”
Someone pounded upstairs.
Lena looked toward the basement window.
“Rachel is coming.”
Then she held up a medicine bottle.
“I found this in Clara’s room. She used it on Dad.”
The video shook.
Before it ended, Lena said something that changed the investigation.
“She doesn’t want Harper. She wants Harper’s trust fund.”
Daniel’s journal explained everything.
Harper’s biological mother, Daniel’s first wife, had died during childbirth. She left a trust worth more than six million dollars.
Daniel controlled the money until Harper turned twenty-five.
If Harper died before adulthood, the trust passed to Daniel.
After Daniel’s death, it would pass to his legal spouse.
Clara.
But there was one problem.
Daniel had quietly changed the trust months before the fire.
If Harper died under suspicious circumstances, the money would go to a children’s foundation.
Clara needed Harper alive.
At least until she found a way around the trust.
Harper was not just a victim.
She was a financial asset Clara had been terrorizing into obedience.
Ruiz found another document in the box.
A recent life-insurance policy.
Clara had taken it out on me two weeks after our wedding.
The payout was three million dollars.
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The listed beneficiary was Clara Monroe.
The policy included accidental death by fire.
