Chapter 4 - The Second System.
David locked the pantry door behind them.
"Who sent that?"
Maria shook her head.
"Unknown number."
"What does it mean by what you stole?"
Maria looked away.
David felt a new wave of dread.
"Maria."
"Mrs. Walker gave me a key."
"A key to what?"
"The old wine room."
David stared at her.
The old wine room had been sealed during renovations three years earlier.
At least, that was what he had been told.
"Emily gave you the key?"
"Two weeks before the accident."
David disliked the way his mind paused at the word accident.
He had spent eighteen months learning how to survive that word.
Now it sounded different.
"Take me there."
Maria hesitated.
"Tonight?"
"Right now."
They left the pantry through the service corridor and descended a narrow staircase behind the kitchen.
Music drifted faintly through the walls as the quartet began its first piece upstairs.
David thought about Natalie standing beneath the chandeliers while he followed a secret his wife had left behind.
The old wine room was at the end of a basement passage.
Its heavy wooden door looked untouched.
Maria reached beneath her collar and pulled out a thin brass key on a chain.
"You wore that for eighteen months?"
"Mrs. Walker told me never to put it in a drawer."
The lock opened with a soft click.
Behind the door was not a wine room.
It was a narrow equipment space filled with old monitors, network boxes, and a small metal cabinet.
One monitor still glowed.
David stared at it.
"Emily built this?"
"She had someone install it when you were in Chicago."
"Who?"
"I don't know."
Maria crossed to the cabinet and opened it.
Inside were dozens of small storage drives labeled by month and year.
The most recent drive was from three weeks before Emily died.
"Why did she need a hidden security archive?"
"She thought somebody had been entering her office."
"Who?"
"She never told me."
David inserted the drive into the system.
Folders appeared on the monitor.
Office.
Library.
East Corridor.
Nursery Hall.
Front Gate.
David opened the office folder.
The first recordings showed Emily working late at her desk.
He had to look away for a moment.
She was alive on the screen.
She tucked loose hair behind her ear in the same absent way he remembered.
She smiled at something on her phone.
She drank tea from the chipped blue mug David had always teased her about.
The grief struck him with almost physical force.
Maria placed a hand on his arm.
"I'm sorry."
David nodded once.
Then a man appeared on the recording.
Jonathan Hale.
The timestamp was 11:48 p.m.
Emily was not in the room.
Hale entered using a key.
He went directly to her desk.
He opened the bottom drawer and photographed several documents with his phone.
David leaned closer to the monitor.
"Why would Hale have a key?"
Maria whispered the answer.
"He shouldn't."
The recording continued.
Hale removed a red folder from the drawer and tucked it beneath his coat.
Then another person entered.
David's stomach dropped.
Grant Keller, David's closest friend and chief financial officer, walked into the office.
Grant closed the door behind him.
Hale handed him the red folder.
The men spoke, but the old camera had no audio.
Grant opened the folder, read one page, and smiled.
David sat completely still.
Grant had been the best man at David's wedding to Emily.
He had carried Lucy around the hospital waiting room the day she was born.
He had stood beside David at Emily's funeral.
Maria covered her mouth.
"Mr. Keller?"
David said nothing.
The timestamp jumped forward.
A second clip showed Grant returning alone and replacing the folder.
Then Emily entered ten minutes later.
She opened the drawer.
She stared at the folder for several seconds.
Then she looked directly at the hidden camera.
She knew.
David opened another folder.
Three days later, Hale and Grant appeared again.
This time Natalie was with them.
David stopped breathing.
The timestamp was eight months before he had supposedly met Natalie at a museum fundraiser.
Natalie stood inside Emily's office wearing a black coat.
She was speaking to Hale.
Grant handed her a photograph.
David enlarged the frame.
It was a picture of him and Lucy.
Maria whispered, "She knew who you were before you met her."
David felt something inside him turn cold.
He opened the final clip.
Natalie pointed to a document on Emily's desk.
Hale shook his head.
Grant tapped a line on the page.
Natalie read it.
Then she said something that the silent camera could not capture.
The three of them looked toward the nursery hall.
The video ended.
David searched the drive for the document they had been reading.
There was no clear image.
Then he noticed a file saved separately from the recordings.
It was a photograph Emily had taken of a legal page.
David opened it.
At the top were the words WALKER FAMILY RESIDENTIAL TRUST.
One paragraph had been highlighted.
If the sole minor beneficiary ceases to occupy the primary residence before the trustee's remarriage, control of the residence shall transfer under Schedule C.
David read it again.
Then he looked at Maria.
"Natalie wasn't trying to take Lucy to another room."
Maria's face went pale.
David stared at the highlighted sentence.
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"She was trying to establish that Lucy had been removed from the main residence."
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