Chapter 7
Daniel Brooks was thirty-one, nervous, and one paycheck away from needing the job too badly to be brave.
But fear cuts both ways.
Camille had already reached him through the investigator she sent the night before, and by the time Edgar came downstairs, Daniel had chosen the side less likely to bury him.
We met in the detached pool house with the door shut and the air conditioner humming.
Daniel could barely hold his coffee cup steady.
“Mrs. Langley,” he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what she was doing.”
“What did you know?” Camille asked.
Daniel glanced at Edgar, who had been excluded from the conversation entirely. Good.
“Mrs. Kristina called me upstairs yesterday around one. She said the camera outside your room had frozen and asked me to disable it until I could swap the unit.”
Camille’s pen moved.
“Did you disable it?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“About one-fifteen.”
The snake reveal had happened after three.
Plenty of time.
“Did that seem unusual?” Camille asked.
Daniel hesitated. “Only because the camera wasn’t broken.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
“Why did you disable it then?”
“Because she told me to.”
“Did anyone else know?”
“Mr. Edgar came up while I was working.” Daniel swallowed. “He asked whether the upstairs feed would be down long.”
My entire body went still.
Not after the fact.
Before.
Edgar had known the camera would be down.
Camille asked the next question for me. “What did you tell him?”
“That it would be dark until I reset it.”
“Did he seem surprised?”
“No.”
There was silence in the room.
I could hear birds outside the pool house and the low whine of the unit over the door.
Finally, I asked, “Daniel, did you see my mother-in-law carrying anything?”
His eyes went to me, then away.
“A sack. Canvas. I thought maybe gardening tools.”
“Was she wearing gloves?”
“Yes.”
The room seemed to tilt again, but this time I stayed upright.
Daniel also had copies of the work order Kristina had insisted he log as “temporary camera malfunction.”
Camille took photographs of it immediately.
After he left, she turned to me. “We’re done playing defense.”
The plan changed quickly.
Camille filed for an emergency protective consultation with a retired judge she trusted, and her investigator, Martin Hale, went deeper into two tracks: the fertility clinic and the reptiles.
I spent that afternoon in a furnished apartment above Camille’s office instead of returning to the Langley house. Edgar called seven times. I answered none.
Then, just before six, he sent a single message through Camille:
Your behavior is making this impossible. Please let me help you before this becomes public.
Before this becomes public.
Not before this gets worse.
Not before someone gets hurt.
Public shame. Control. Image.
That was his hierarchy.
At eight-thirty that evening, Martin called.
“I found your snakes,” he said.
It sounded ridiculous, like the opening line of a dark joke, but his tone was all business.
A licensed wildlife wrangler in Putnam County had been paid cash to “relocate two nuisance rattlesnakes” into a temporary holding container two days earlier. The client had not used Kristina’s name.
“What name?” I asked.
“Caldwell Garden Services.”
Kristina’s private landscaping vendor.
“He remembers the driver,” Martin added. “Older man, Langley livery plate on the SUV.”
Kristina had not gone herself.
She had sent someone.
Martin also had a copy of the invoice.
The wrangler assumed the snakes were being moved from one property zone to another under supervision.
Instead, they ended up in my bed.
Camille sat across from me, very still.
“That’s conspiracy,” she said quietly.
I thought the day could not get worse.
May you like
Then Martin continued.
“One more thing. Your fertility clinic has a nurse willing to speak.”
