Chapter 4 - LARA'S VERSION
Lara requested an interview before prosecutors charged her.
She arrived with two attorneys and a folder of medical records describing Emily's anxiety after her father's death. The records were genuine, but Lara used them as weapons.
"Emily has always needed a villain," she told Marcus. "First it was me. Then Brandon. Soon it will be you."
Marcus placed Grant's bank documents on the table.
"Why did you forge Emily's signature?"
Lara smiled faintly. "You assume it was forged."
"Emily was in another state on the date of transfer."
"Then perhaps Grant signed for her."
"A dead man signed a document two weeks after his funeral?"
The smile vanished.
Marcus played Grant's recording.
Lara did not react to the accusation of bribery. She reacted only when Brandon's voice entered at the end.
Her eyes shifted toward the observation mirror.
"Brandon was at the lake house that night?" Marcus asked.
"No."
"We just heard him."
"Recordings can be manipulated."
"So can guardianship petitions."
He slid another document forward.
Police had found it in Lara's private cloud account. The petition asked a court to declare Emily incompetent due to delusions, impulsive behavior, and self-harm. It had been drafted six weeks earlier.
A physician from Ravenscroft Wellness Clinic had agreed to sign the evaluation without meeting Emily.
Lara leaned back.
"My daughter-in-law was stealing information from her husband's company."
"You planned to confine her."
"I planned to protect her from herself."
"The same way you protected Grant?"
For the first time, anger crossed Lara's face.
"Grant was a self-righteous accountant who believed paperwork mattered more than people. He would have destroyed thousands of jobs."
"Did you kill him?"
"No."
"Did Brandon?"
Lara looked toward the mirror again.
"My son has spent his entire life cleaning up other people's damage."
It was not a denial.
In a separate interview room, Brandon blamed Lara.
He admitted confronting Grant at the lake house but claimed Grant was alive when he left. He said Lara stayed behind.
"She called me an hour later," he told Marcus. "She said Grant fell."
"Why didn't you tell police you were there?"
"My mother said it would look bad."
"Why was Grant's key in your laundry room?"
Brandon stared at the table.
"Emily put it there."
"She didn't know it existed."
"Then my mother did."
Each tried to place the dead man in the other's hands.
Neither explained the missing camera memory.
That evening, Emily received a message on the safe-house phone.
NO CALLER ID.
The text contained a photograph of the smoke detector's memory module lying on a newspaper.
Today's date was visible.
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Below the photograph was one sentence:
YOUR FATHER'S FALL WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING.
