Chapter 3 - The Missing Footage
Nobody left the foyer.
Not after Olivia said Nathan had ordered a camera removed.
Rebecca closed the front door.
Her voice was calm.
“Mr. Caldwell, do not touch any electronic device in this house.”
Nathan stared at his niece.
“Olivia, you don't understand what you heard.”
“I heard you.”
Brooke grabbed her daughter's arm.
“We're going upstairs.”
Olivia pulled away.
“No.”
Brooke's face hardened.
“Excuse me?”
“You always say I lie when I tell people things.”
Olivia looked at me.
“But I'm not lying.”
I crouched slightly so we were at eye level.
“What did you hear?”
She swallowed.
“The night after Ethan came home from the hospital, Mom and Uncle Nathan were in the kitchen.”
Brooke cut in.
“She's confused.”
Rebecca turned toward her.
“Let her speak.”
Victoria snapped, “You do not order my family around in my house.”
Rebecca looked around the foyer.
“According to the deed, Mrs. Caldwell, it isn't your house.”
Victoria's face went scarlet.
Olivia continued.
“Uncle Nathan said the basement camera had recorded enough.”
My heart began pounding.
“Enough of what?”
“I don't know.”
She looked at Ethan.
“But Mom said if Aunt Claire saw it, everybody would blame them.”
Them.
Not him.
Not Ethan.
Them.
Rebecca asked the house manager to secure the basement.
Nathan stepped between them.
“This is ridiculous.”
Rebecca handed him a document.
“You were served with an evidence preservation notice twelve minutes ago.”
Nathan did not take it.
“If surveillance footage existed and was deliberately destroyed after litigation became reasonably foreseeable, that's something a judge may care about.”
“I didn't destroy anything.”
“Then you shouldn't be worried.”
We went downstairs.
The basement had been converted years earlier into a wine cellar, game room, theater, and storage corridor.
Ethan hated coming down there now.
I finally understood why.
The security panel was mounted beside the utility room.
One camera channel displayed static.
Channel six.
Basement east corridor.
The digital archive showed a gap beginning six weeks earlier.
The date was the night of Ethan's accident.
Nathan folded his arms.
“System malfunction.”
Rebecca's technician arrived twenty minutes later.
He examined the recorder.
Then he looked at Rebecca.
“This wasn't a malfunction.”
Nathan swore.
The technician pointed to the server log.
“Someone manually deleted the local archive.”
Brooke immediately said, “Nathan did it.”
Nathan turned toward her.
“What?”
“You told me you handled it.”
Victoria shouted, “Enough.”
I watched them turn on each other.
Interesting.
Rebecca noticed too.
The technician continued.
“There may be another copy.”
Nathan's eyes moved.
Barely.
But I saw it.
“So there was cloud backup?” I asked.
The technician nodded.
“Possibly.”
Nathan laughed.
“There wasn't.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“How would you know?”
He said nothing.
That was his mistake.
The technician contacted the security company.
The account had been altered two days after Ethan's accident.
Cloud storage had been disabled.
But the representative gave us one useful detail.
Before the service change, a thirty-day archive had automatically synced.
And because my father's company originally owned the security account, backup access still existed under an old corporate administrator profile.
Rebecca looked at me.
“Do you know who has that login?”
I did.
My father's longtime executive assistant.
Margaret Ellis.
I called her.
She answered on the second ring.
“Claire?”
“Margaret, I need access to an old Rhodes Security account.”
She became quiet.
“Which property?”
“The Caldwell estate.”
Another pause.
Then she said something that made my skin prickle.
“I wondered when you would ask about that.”
I gripped the phone.
“What do you mean?”
Margaret lowered her voice.
“Your father asked me never to close that administrator account.”
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“Why?”
“Because before he died, he stopped trusting Nathan.”
