I didn’t need to hide anymore. The game of shadows was over.
I slammed the laptop shut, walked to the door, and turned the deadbolt with a sharp, echoing clack.
I threw the door open.
Eleanor stood there, a triumphant smirk on her face, but her eyes dropped immediately to the heavy iron fire poker in my right hand. The smirk vanished.
“You’re right, Eleanor,” I said, my voice cold and hollow, completely devoid of fear. “He did hide something in the masonry. But it wasn’t cash.”
I held up the silver USB drive in my left hand. “It was you.” Eleanor’s eyes locked onto the small piece of silver metal in my hand. For a fraction of a second, the mask completely slipped. The elegant, commanding widow was replaced by a cornered predator calculating its odds of survival.
“What is that?” she demanded, her voice tight, attempting to maintain her aggressive posture.
“This,” I said, stepping out of the study and into the hallway, forcing her to take a step back, “is a digital archive of the last twelve months. It contains financial records of your offshore accounts. It contains your burner emails.” I took another step, my voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “And it contains high-definition, time-stamped video of you standing in my kitchen, dropping liquid digitalis into my father’s chamomile tea.”
The color drained from Eleanor’s face. She looked like a wax statue rapidly melting under a heat lamp.
“You’re bluffing,” she gasped, though her breathing had become shallow and frantic. “He didn’t know. He was senile.”
“He was a structural engineer, Eleanor,” I fired back. “He knew how to build things that last, and he knew how to find the rot in the foundation. He noticed the symptoms. He had his blood drawn privately. And then, instead of confronting you, he installed cameras in the crown molding and let you hang yourself.”
She lunged for my hand.
It was a desperate, uncoordinated swipe. I easily sidestepped her, raising the heavy brass fire poker just enough to remind her it was there. She stumbled into the wall, her chest heaving.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” she spat, her voice climbing an octave into hysteria. “If you take that to the police, it will be a media circus! His legacy will be dragged through the mud. The great Arthur Sterling, murdered by his trophy wife. You’ll never have a day of peace!”
“His legacy?” I laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. “His legacy is this house. His legacy is his daughter. You think I care about the local gossip column? You murdered my father!”
“He was dying anyway!” she screamed, abandoning all pretense, her true, ugly self fully exposed in the dim hallway light. “His heart was already weak! I just sped up the inevitable! I gave him his pills, I sat through his boring stories, I earned that money! It’s mine!”