Chapter 4 - THE MISSING SEVEN MINUTES
Ethan called the chief accountant before dawn. Michael Chen had worked for Hale Design Group for fourteen years and had never once used the phrase urgent unless a problem deserved it.
“There's nearly nine hundred thousand dollars missing across fifteen months,” Michael said. “Payments went to a contractor called Bellwether Interiors. We cannot verify that it completed the work it invoiced.”
Ethan looked out over the guesthouse garden. He could see Lily's rabbit on the sofa, one floppy ear folded across its face. Money suddenly seemed grotesquely small beside the life she had nearly lost.
“Send the records to the investigators,” he replied. “Preserve everything. I want the original authorization logs, not just a summary. No one deletes a file or speaks to Vanessa without counsel.”
Michael hesitated. “The invoices were introduced by Vanessa during the mansion renovation. She had authority to approve suppliers up to a limit. These were split into smaller amounts.”
“And the signatures?” Ethan asked. Michael's voice grew quieter. “Some appear to be electronic approvals issued while you were away. Your login was used, but we don't yet know who used it.”
Ethan remembered Vanessa leaning across his study desk to ask for a password so she could print a seating plan. He had read it aloud without looking up from his laptop.
Every small act of trust had seemed insignificant on its own. Gathered together, they formed an open door. He felt anger rise, then forced it into a question about protecting the records.
Later that morning, Ortiz visited the guesthouse. She did not bring a uniformed officer inside. She knew a police presence could unsettle a child who had only just returned to familiar routines.
June took Lily into the adjoining room for a picture book. Ethan remained by the kitchen table while Ortiz spread a series of photographs beside a notebook.
The first showed the broken railing from above. The second revealed a gap where a fastening assembly belonged. The third showed the small bolt recovered near the outdoor drain.
“Preliminary examination suggests that bolt belongs to the altered assembly,” Ortiz said. “We also found faint tool impressions on the mounting. We'll have a specialist compare them with tools from the property.”
Ethan studied the photographs until the balcony seemed to rise around him. He could almost hear Lily's shoes dragging across the tile. He pushed the pictures away before his hands began shaking.
“Tell me about the cameras,” he said. Ortiz opened her notebook to another page. “The main video archive shows a seven-minute gap, from 4:16 to 4:23 p.m.”
Lily had fallen shortly after 4:20. Ethan felt his heart pound. “That's too precise.” Ortiz nodded. “It may be. We need evidence explaining who accessed the system and how.”
The house used a local recorder as well as a cloud account. The cloud clips had been deleted through an administrator session, but the local equipment maintained independent diagnostic logs and occasional still frames.
“Can you recover them?” Ethan asked. “Possibly,” she replied. “Our digital team is imaging the device. We won't risk changing the original data by experimenting with it.”
She also showed him an entry recording a security account login shortly before the gap. It came from a tablet registered to Vanessa, though the person holding the tablet was not visible.
Ethan exhaled slowly. The evidence was accumulating, but each detail made his own failure harder to ignore. He had given Vanessa control of the household systems because she complained he was never home.
Ortiz read his expression. “Someone choosing to deceive you is responsible for that choice. Your job now is to help us preserve what happened and protect your daughter.”
He did not feel absolved. He felt assigned a task he could still complete. For the first time since the fall, anger began turning into deliberate action.
June appeared at the doorway carrying a mug of tea. She asked whether she should return later, but Ortiz invited her to stay and describe the maintenance key incident in her own words.
June recalled seeing a red-handled driver protruding from Vanessa's tool case. She had not seen Vanessa remove a bolt. Ortiz carefully distinguished what June witnessed from what she suspected.
“Did she say anything about the balcony?” Ortiz asked. June frowned. “She told me Lily needed to learn not to be afraid of heights. I said the railing was no place for lessons.”
“Did anyone else hear that?” June shook her head. “No. But I wrote it in my work diary because her tone unsettled me. I can bring the diary.”
That afternoon, Ethan reviewed the company's calendar with Michael. Three days before the fall, he had discovered several unusual invoices and arranged a private audit for the following Monday.
He had confronted Vanessa over dinner, asking her to explain the contractor. She had called his questions insulting, then cried until he abandoned the discussion to comfort her.
The next morning she had sent an affectionate message: Trust me a little longer. By late afternoon, she was encouraging Lily to play on the balcony after the weather cleared.
The sequence was dreadful, but Ethan resisted converting memory into proof. He saved the messages, noted their dates, and sent copies through the investigator's secure evidence channel.
Near sunset, Ortiz called with a development. A recovered local frame showed the upper terrace at 4:15. Vanessa's burgundy dress was visible near the balcony doors. The image was grainy but recognizable.
At 4:16, the recording stopped. At 4:23, it resumed with emergency responders below. The seven minutes between remained a deliberate-looking absence that technicians were trying to reconstruct.
“She's saying the security system malfunctioned,” Ethan replied. “She can say that,” Ortiz answered. “What matters is whether the records support it.”
Ethan went into Lily's room after the call. She was seated on the carpet with June, placing wooden animals into a toy ark. The boat tipped, scattering them across the floor.
Lily looked alarmed for one brief second. Ethan knelt beside her and steadied the toy without rushing to gather the pieces. “It can fall,” he said softly. “We can build it again.”
She watched him reposition the ark. Then she handed him a small wooden bird. Ethan accepted it as though it were the most valuable object in the world.
That evening, Michael sent one final file. It contained a bank statement for Bellwether Interiors. Several payments had moved onward to an account controlled by a company registered under Vanessa's former surname.
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The missing money had a destination. The missing minutes had an administrator login. And someone had known exactly when a two-year-old child would reach for a railing that could no longer hold her.
Ethan set the papers down and made a decision. He would never confront Vanessa alone or gamble Lily's safety for an admission. He would let the evidence speak loudly enough to survive any denial.
