Chapter 7: The Man in the Garden
Naomi was already moving.
"Stay here," she said.
"Lock the kitchen door behind me.
Don't open it for anyone until I knock three times."
"Naomi—"
"Three times," she said, and went out the back.
The garden behind Whitmore House was deep and dark, lit only by the ambient glow from the ballroom windows on the far side.
Stone paths ran between hedgerows that had grown tall over decades.
There were three gates — one to the service drive, one to the greenhouse, one to the old groundskeeper's cottage at the property's edge.
She moved without a flashlight.
She didn't need one.
She had walked these paths every morning for eleven months.
She went left first, toward the service drive gate.
Closed, padlocked from the inside.
She checked the lock.
Undisturbed.
She moved along the hedge line toward the greenhouse.
The gravel here was finer, and she stepped onto the grass border to silence her footsteps.
She heard him before she saw him.
A single soft sound — a shoe shifting on stone — near the greenhouse door.
Naomi stopped.
She placed herself behind the corner of the hedge and waited.
Davis Holt stepped out from the shadow of the greenhouse wall.
He was holding a phone, its screen dimmed.
He was looking toward the house.
He hadn't seen her.
She let him take two more steps before she spoke.
"The gate you came through is padlocked now," she said.
"The one at the service drive was locked before you arrived.
That leaves the groundskeeper's cottage gate, which opens onto a private road with no public access for half a mile in either direction."
Holt spun toward her voice.
"I'd sit down," she said, "but there's nowhere comfortable out here."
He was bigger than her by a significant margin — broad through the shoulders, with the careful stillness of someone who was used to being the most physically imposing person in a room.
He looked at her for a moment.
Then he smiled.
"You're the maid," he said.
"Yes."
"Vanessa said you were trouble."
"Vanessa was right about that." Naomi didn't move from where she stood.
"You took a photograph through the kitchen window.
That's trespassing and surveillance.
You were in the study earlier tonight.
That's breaking and entering.
You'd like to leave before Ethan calls the police, which he's doing right now."
Holt's smile didn't change.
"You're bluffing."
"I'm not.
But I understand why you'd think so." She tilted her head slightly.
"You were told I'm a housekeeper.
You're recalculating."
Something shifted in his expression.
"Here's what I know about you," Naomi said.
"You've been working with Vanessa for at least eleven years.
You're not a lawyer — lawyers don't do their own property work.
You're not muscle — you dress too carefully and you move too quietly for that.
You're a fixer.
You research, you plan, you handle problems that can't be handled through normal channels."
Holt said nothing.
"The codicil you photographed tonight is already secured with three certified copies at the estate attorney's office," she continued.
"Whatever legal angle you were building around a missing original — it's gone.
The wire transfer record is in Ethan's attorney's hands.
The corridor footage showing you entering the study is on a drive that left this property two hours ago." She paused.
"You came back tonight to take the photograph because Vanessa wanted to know if Ethan was acting alone or if he had help.
Now she knows."
Holt looked at her steadily.
"What do you want?"
"I want you to leave this property and not come back." She kept her voice even.
"And I want you to tell Vanessa that whatever she thinks she's holding — whatever she told Ethan he doesn't know yet — she should consider very carefully whether using it is worth what comes after."
"That sounds like a threat."
"It's information," Naomi said.
"She can do what she likes with it."
In the distance, through the house, she heard the faint sound of the front doorbell.
The police.
Holt heard it too.
His jaw tightened.
"The groundskeeper's cottage gate," Naomi said.
"Thirty seconds."
He looked at her for one long moment.
Then he walked past her without another word, moving quickly through the dark toward the far end of the garden.
May you like
Naomi waited until she heard the gate latch close.
Then she walked back to the kitchen and knocked three times.
