Chapter 6: The Footage
I called my new attorney that evening.
Her name was Sandra Okafor.
She had been recommended to me three months ago by a colleague in London, and I had filed her number without using it, the way you keep an umbrella in a closet and hope you never need it.
I called her at seven in the evening.
She answered on the second ring.
"I need you to look at something tonight," I said.
"Where are you?"
"Greenwich.
My house."
"I'll be there in forty minutes."
She arrived in thirty-eight, in a dark coat with a leather briefcase and the focused expression of someone who had not come to be reassured.
I walked her through everything at the kitchen table — the guardianship petition, the asset division claim, Richard Hale's withdrawal, Patricia Odom's visit, Grace's notebook.
Then I handed her the USB drive.
She watched the footage on my laptop without speaking.
I watched her face instead of the screen.
After eleven minutes she sat back.
"How many nights does this cover?"
"Thirty-one," Grace said from the doorway.
Sandra looked at her.
"You recorded this yourself?"
"The camera was already there.
Mr.
Calloway had it installed when the children were born.
I just checked whether it was still running."
"It was running the whole time?"
"Yes."
Sandra looked at me.
"She didn't know about the camera."
"No."
"Does she know now?"
"I don't think so."
Sandra closed the laptop.
"The guardianship petition is going to collapse.
The footage alone would be enough, but combined with the social worker's report and this notebook—" She touched the spiral cover.
"Richard Hale's conflict of interest also gives you grounds to have the petition reviewed for procedural misconduct."
"What about the asset claim?"
"Eighteen months of cohabitation in a home you own, with no joint financial accounts, no shared lease, no legal agreement of any kind.
She was your fiancée.
She was not your partner in any legal sense." Sandra paused.
"She may have an attorney willing to argue it.
No judge is going to award it."
I looked at the USB drive on the table.
Thirty-one nights.
Thirty-one nights of footage that Vanessa had performed her way through, never once looking up at the small lens in the corner of the hallway ceiling.
"There's something else on there," Grace said quietly.
Sandra looked up.
"The last night.
Four days ago." Grace's voice was steady.
"She made a phone call in the hallway.
She didn't go to her room.
She stood right there, at eleven-thirty at night, and she called someone.
I couldn't hear it from my room.
But the camera did."
Sandra opened the laptop again.
We watched the last clip together.
Vanessa stood in the hallway in a silk robe, her back to the camera, phone pressed to her ear.
The audio was faint but the camera's built-in microphone had caught most of it.
*"—it has to be before he gets back.
If he comes home early, the whole thing falls apart."*
A pause.
*"I know what I promised you.
You'll get your share when the estate transfer goes through.
But you need to keep him in London until Friday.
Can you do that or not?"*
Another pause.
*"Good.
Don't call me on this number again."*
Sandra stopped the clip.
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Keep him in London," I said.
I thought about the call I had received ten days ago.
My business partner, James Whitfield, telling me the Singapore meeting had been pushed back.
That I needed to stay through the end of the week.
That he had already rescheduled my return flight as a courtesy.
James, who had been at the party today.
James, who had been standing at the back of the terrace when Vanessa's eyes had moved past me to find someone she trusted.
I had thought she was signaling to Richard.
"Sandra," I said.
"How quickly can you file for an emergency injunction on the guardianship petition?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"Do it." I stood up.
"And I need you to find out everything you can about James Whitfield's financial relationship with Vanessa Ashworth."
Sandra looked at me carefully.
May you like
"You think they've been working together longer than today."
"I think," I said, "that I need to know exactly how long I've been the only person in this house who didn't know what was happening."
