Chapter 2 - The Memory Card Bertha Hid
I stared at the photograph until Detective Ortiz touched my arm.
“Mrs. Hayes?”
I turned the screen toward her.
The woman beside Bertha was Dr. Allison Shaw.
At least, that was the name I remembered.
Allison had been a clinical pharmacist at Mercy Regional when I still worked there.
She was brilliant.
Reserved.
And two years earlier, Bertha had told me Allison died in a car accident outside Asheville.
I had sent flowers.
There had been no funeral that I attended because the family supposedly held a private service.
Yet the photograph on my phone had been timestamped eleven days earlier.
Allison was alive.
And standing beside my daughter.
Ortiz read the messages.
“Do you know her?”
“Yes.”
“Call the number.”
I did.
Straight to voicemail.
No identifying message.
Ortiz immediately copied the number.
“Don’t answer any further texts without telling me.”
Christopher was approaching again.
I locked my phone.
“Margaret, we need to talk.”
“No.”
His attorney, Evan Cole, stayed several steps behind him.
Christopher looked at Veronica.
“I want my daughter.”
My hand tightened around hers.
“She’s staying with me.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“Neither do you while police are investigating her mother’s death.”
His face hardened.
“I have not been accused of anything.”
“Then you shouldn’t be worried.”
“Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Making everything sound suspicious.”
I almost laughed.
“You lied about when you last saw Bertha.”
His attorney stepped forward.
“Mr. Hayes has been through a traumatic event and may have confused the timeline.”
I looked at Ortiz.
She had heard it.
Christopher noticed.
His anger shifted toward me.
“You need to stop turning Veronica against me.”
I felt the little girl move closer.
“I haven’t said anything to her.”
“She’s seven.”
“Yes.”
“She doesn’t understand death.”
“Neither of us knows what she understands.”
His gaze dropped to her.
“What did your mother tell you?”
Veronica hid behind my coat.
“Christopher.”
He ignored me.
“Sweetheart, what did Mommy tell you?”
“Stop questioning her,” Ortiz said.
Christopher looked at the detective.
“That is my child.”
“And right now I’m asking you not to question a potential witness about the circumstances surrounding her mother’s death.”
Potential witness.
The words landed hard.
Christopher stepped back.
His attorney whispered something.
They walked away.
I crouched beside Veronica.
“You okay?”
She nodded.
But she was staring at the chapel doors.
“What is it?”
“Mommy doesn’t like him asking me questions.”
I stopped breathing for a second.
“Did she say that?”
Veronica nodded.
I did not tell Ortiz.
Not yet.
Not because I distrusted her.
Because I was beginning to understand that whatever Bertha had done before she died, she had done it carefully.
The memory card.
The hidden note.
Allison.
Veronica.
My daughter had built a trail.
And I did not want to destroy it by moving faster than she had planned.
At 2:05, the medical examiner’s transport team arrived.
Christopher objected loudly enough that every remaining mourner heard him.
He demanded paperwork.
He demanded a supervisor.
He demanded that no invasive examination be performed without his attorney present.
Detective Ortiz said very little.
She did not need to.
The body was taken.
The cremation was officially canceled.
For the first time since Bertha died, something irreversible had been stopped.
I should have felt relieved.
Instead, I felt terrified.
Because Christopher had wanted those hours to disappear.
And now they wouldn’t.
Veronica and I went home with my sister Joan.
I drove.
Veronica sat in the backseat this time.
I could not bring myself to place her beside me where she had been that morning.
At every stoplight, I checked the rearview mirror.
She stared out the window.
Halfway home, she spoke.
“Grandma?”
“Yes?”
“Mommy didn’t die in the bedroom.”
My hands tightened around the steering wheel.
Joan turned around.
“What did you say?”
Veronica looked at me in the mirror.
“She said Daddy moved her.”
Joan went completely still.
I pulled into a grocery store parking lot.
“Veronica.”
She looked frightened by our reaction.
I softened my voice.
“Sweetheart, did you see Daddy move Mommy?”
“No.”
“Did Mommy tell you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“In a dream?”
She shrugged.
“She was in my room.”
Joan stared at me.
I ignored her.
“What did Mommy say exactly?”
Veronica thought.
“She said, ‘I wasn’t there when I fell.’”
My skin prickled.
“Where did she fall?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“Did she say anything else?”
Veronica’s lower lip trembled.
“She said the yellow room.”
Joan whispered, “What yellow room?”
I knew.
Christopher and Bertha lived in a restored house in Myers Park.
Most rooms were white, gray, or blue.
Except Christopher’s private downstairs study.
Bertha hated the color.
Mustard yellow.
He refused to repaint it.
I called Ortiz immediately.
She listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she asked, “Has anyone entered the Hayes residence since your daughter died?”
“Christopher.”
“Anyone else?”
“Probably his family.”
“Do you have access?”
“I used to have a key.”
“Do not go there.”
“I wasn’t—”
“I’m serious, Margaret.”
Something in her voice told me she was already moving.
“What are you going to do?”
“Request consent to search. If he refuses, I’ll take what we have to a judge.”
“He’ll refuse.”
“He already did.”
I stared ahead.
“You asked him?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
Of course he refused.
Ortiz continued.
“Stay with your granddaughter.”
“I will.”
“And Margaret?”
“Yes?”
“The memory card opened.”
My heart jumped.
“What’s on it?”
“Three folders.”
“What folders?”
“Medical.”
I closed my eyes.
“Financial.”
Joan gripped my arm.
“And the third?”
Ortiz paused.
“Christopher.”
The line went quiet.
“What’s inside that folder?”
“We’re still reviewing it.”
“Tell me.”
“Videos.”
I looked at Veronica.
She was playing with the edge of her coat.
“How many?”
“Seventeen.”
“Of what?”
“Your daughter.”
“Talking?”
“Yes.”
“About Christopher?”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
I pressed the phone harder against my ear.
“Can I see them?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because one of the first recordings makes a specific allegation, and I need to verify it before I tell you more.”
“What allegation?”
“Margaret.”
“Lena.”
It was the first time I used her first name.
Maybe she heard what was underneath it.
Mother.
Nurse.
Woman waiting to find out how her child died.
Ortiz exhaled.
“In the recording, Bertha says she discovered Christopher had been giving her something without her knowledge.”
The world narrowed.
“What?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Medication?”
“Possibly.”
I thought about cardiac arrest.
Arrhythmias.
Electrolyte disturbances.
Drug interactions.
I thought about a healthy thirty-five-year-old woman collapsing without warning.
“Was there anything in her toxicology?”
“Full testing hasn’t been completed.”
“What did Bertha say?”
“She believed he was putting it in her tea.”
My mouth went dry.
Bertha drank tea every night.
Chamomile.
Honey.
One cup after Veronica went to bed.
Christopher made it for her.
I had watched him do it dozens of times.
Ortiz continued.
“She recorded herself collecting a sample.”
“Where is it?”
“We don’t know.”
“What happened to the sample?”
“That’s one of the things we’re trying to determine.”
I stared through the windshield at families pushing shopping carts under bright parking-lot lights.
Ordinary life.
It felt obscene.
“Did she say why he was doing it?”
“Not on the first recording.”
“Then keep watching.”
“We are.”
“When will the autopsy happen?”
“Tonight or tomorrow morning.”
“Call me.”
“I will.”
We drove home.
That evening, I locked every door.
Joan stayed.
Veronica slept in my room.
At 8:30, Detective Ortiz called again.
The search warrant had been approved.
Police were entering Christopher’s house.
At 9:17, she called a second time.
“We found the yellow room.”
“And?”
“Someone cleaned it.”
“Recently?”
“Very.”
My pulse rose.
“Did you find anything?”
“One thing.”
“What?”
“A section of carpet had been removed.”
I stood from the couch.
“How big?”
“About four feet by six.”
My nursing instincts screamed.
“You think she collapsed there.”
“We don’t know.”
“Blood?”
“No visible blood.”
Then Ortiz said something that chilled me more.
“The floor underneath was scrubbed with bleach.”
I looked toward my bedroom.
Veronica had finally fallen asleep.
“Lena.”
“Yes?”
“There’s another thing.”
“What?”
“Bertha used to keep a hidden lockbox in the yellow study.”
“Where?”
“Behind a lower bookshelf panel.”
“Are you sure?”
“She showed me after Christopher bought the house. She joked that the previous owner must have been paranoid.”
Ortiz went quiet.
“Margaret, hold.”
I heard voices.
Footsteps.
A man saying something in the distance.
Then Ortiz returned.
“The panel is here.”
My heart hammered.
“And?”
“The compartment is empty.”
Of course.
“What would Bertha have put there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think.”
I did.
Insurance papers.
Passports.
Emergency cash.
Maybe medications.
Then I remembered Christmas.
Bertha had been standing beside that bookshelf when Christopher entered unexpectedly.
She had closed something fast.
He had asked what she was doing.
She laughed.
Nothing.
At the time I had thought nothing of it.
“Lena.”
“Yes?”
“She was hiding something from him.”
“We know.”
“No. Before all this. Months ago.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Ortiz lowered her voice.
“We found scratches around the compartment. Fresh ones.”
“Someone forced it.”
“Looks that way.”
Christopher.
Or someone else.
My phone vibrated with another message from the unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then I saw the photograph.
Not Allison this time.
Bertha.
She was sitting inside a car.
Holding a red insulated medical specimen bag.
The message underneath read:
THE SAMPLE WAS NEVER IN THE HOUSE.
Then another:
BERTHA GAVE IT TO ME.
I typed before Ortiz could stop me.
WHO ARE YOU?
Three dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Returned.
Then the answer came.
IF CHRISTOPHER KNOWS I’M ALIVE, VERONICA IS NEXT.
I stared at the screen.
May you like
And behind me, from the dark hallway, Veronica screamed.
“Grandma—someone’s at the window.”
