Charlotte flipped through the camera app to the list of archived videos. She checked the cameras for unusual activity leading up to Miller’s death, but the front camera held nothing but videos of FedEx drivers leaving packages, water deliveries and the everyday comings and goings of the family. The back door camera contained much of the same—-the twins leading their horses back and forth, Todd rolling a wheelbarrow to and fro, Lyndsey leaving her apartment and walking down the path that led to the riding rings or toward the back door of the house, usually around dinner time.
She wasn’t sure what she hoped to find. Maybe one of them in the backyard pretending to bash skulls with an iron rabbit. Maybe a stranger with the iron rabbit in his hand, walking toward the house holding his driver’s license towards the camera as he walked. That would be nice.
She heard Mina talking to the cleaning crew in the hall and hastened to check the back yard roof top camera with the refection spot one more time. She watched the reflection of Mina trudging up and down the stairs, waiting on her brother. After all that caregiving, she had every right to be upset her brother had willed almost everything to his surprise daughter. She saw another figure pass by and recognized it in the wavy metal as Lyndsey. She assumed she was on her way up to talk to Miller and then hide with the puppies—
Hold the phone.
The date on the file was two days before Miller died. She went through some earlier files and found more evidence of Lyndsey heading up the stairs, always around four o’clock, almost always on Wednesdays.
Mina came in looking exhausted.
“I swear, you have to keep on people to do a good job at anything. Kids, help—”
“Do you do something on Wednesdays around four?” asked Charlotte, looking up from the videos.
“Hm?” Mina seemed confused for a moment before her expression relaxed. “Oh, yes, that’s mahjong night with my friends. Why?”
Charlotte held out the phone and Mina took it to watch the video she’d queued up.
“That’s what you showed me before. Lyndsey going up the stairs.”
“Look at the date.”
She gasped. “That’s a week before he died.”
Charlotte nodded. “I checked. She goes up those stairs every Wednesday for as far back as the videos go.”
“I think they erase after three months,” mumbled Mina. She looked at Charlotte. “What does this mean?”
“It means Lyndsey was cultivating a relationship with your brother. Talking to him. Getting to know him. Gaining his confidence.”
“Behind my back.” Mina lowered the phone and stared through the window into the front yard. “She could have talked him into changing the will.”
“It also means she lied about being suddenly summoned upstairs.”
Mina sat. “The day I found her, I’d come home early. One of the mahjong girls had the flu and we had to cancel, but I didn’t find out until I was almost there. I turned around...” She looked at Charlotte. “Did I catch her in the act of killing him?”
“I don’t know. But I’m starting to call everything into question.”
“Like what?”
“Like the paternity test that says she’s his biological daughter.”
Mina nodded slowly, suddenly looking very sad.
“What is it?” asked Charlotte.
“There’s something I need to show you. The thing that has had me most upset.” She disappeared toward her bedroom and reappeared with a sheet of paper. She held it out, her face flush with emotion.
“What is it?” Charlotte looked at the document. “Another paternity test?”
She nodded. “The twins are Kimber’s, too.”
Charlotte gasped. “I thought they were your other brother’s kids?”
“Kimber had an affair with Liz, our sister-in-law. She was in the process of proving the babies were his when she died.”
“Proving?”
“She wanted Kimber to give John a raise and give her money as well.”
“She was blackmailing him.”
“Yes. Though it wouldn’t have worked. Kimber would have told his brother himself before he let her blackmail him.”
“Then they end up dead and he takes in the girls? His girls?”
She nodded. “At the time he felt everything was turning out the way it should, in a way. He didn’t want our brother dead, of course. But he went from villain to hero in a heartbeat.”
“Villain?”
“I mean having an affair with his brother’s wife. She was about to tell everyone. And there were people who knew about the affair. At the time, a part of me thought taking in Lyndsey, too, made it less obvious the twins were his. It made it look like we were just doing the right thing. It threw the company rumor mill off the scent.”
“Didn’t Tracy Griffin work for him?”
“Yes. But who would ever imagine he was the real father of all three kids? I told him taking the girls would make him look like a great guy. Especially to women. That did it.”
Charlotte studied the document in her hand.
“I assume the twins don’t know?”
Mina shook her head.
Charlotte pointed to a circular splash mark on the paternity test results. “What’s this red blotch at the top?”
Mina sniffed. “Cherry juice, I think. Kimber loved his Manhattans. I’m sure as soon as he found out his sister-in-law’s kids were actually his, he probably started drinking.”
“So this is the original?”
Mina leaned to look. “Yes. I left him a copy. I was afraid he might destroy the original during one of his snits and I wanted a record in case I needed it.” She grit her teeth. “Like now.”
“You think the girls deserve more.”
Mina nodded. “I feel trapped. If I tell the girls they’re Kimber’s daughters too, they’ll contest the will. It will tear the family apart.”
“But if you don’t tell
