Chapter 2 - TWENTY WITNESSES AND ONE HONEST WOMAN
The first officer entered through the front doors with his hand resting near his belt.
A second officer followed him into the dining room and stopped when he saw me.
Broken china covered the table.
Blood marked my blouse.
Diego stood beside the overturned chair while his family arranged their faces into expressions of concern.
The older officer asked, “Who called?”
“I did.”
Before I could say more, Victoria rushed forward.
“There has been a terrible misunderstanding.”
The officer looked past her. “Ma’am, please step back.”
“My son accidentally dropped a plate.”
“He did not drop it,” Natalie said.
Every head turned toward her.
Marco’s face darkened. “Natalie.”
She ignored him.
“He picked it up and threw it at Valerie’s head.”
The silence afterward was colder than the one after the plate shattered.
The officers separated us.
A paramedic examined the cut near my temple while a young officer took my statement in the library. I could hear Diego arguing in the foyer.
“She threatened me first.”
“With what?” an officer asked.
“She said I didn’t know what she was capable of.”
“That was after you struck her?”
Diego hesitated.
From the dining room came Victoria’s polished voice.
“Valerie has been under tremendous professional stress. She misunderstood a family conversation and became emotional.”
I closed my eyes.
They were already building the story.
My stress.
My emotions.
My misunderstanding.
The paramedic gently pressed gauze against my head. “You’ll probably need a few stitches.”
“Okay.”
“Do you feel dizzy?”
“A little.”
Then an officer entered carrying a clear evidence bag containing several pieces of the plate.
“Mrs. Cruz, your sister-in-law says she may have video.”
I looked toward the doorway.
Natalie stood there with her phone in both hands.
“I started recording when they began talking about the condo,” she said.
Marco appeared behind her.
“That was a private dinner.”
The officer blocked him from entering.
Natalie’s face tightened, but she continued. “I have the demand about the apartment. Diego shouting. The plate hitting Valerie. All of it.”
Victoria’s voice rose from the hall.
“Natalie, think very carefully about what you are doing to this family.”
Natalie looked toward the sound.
“I am.”
The recording ended the debate over whether Diego had thrown the plate.
He was placed in handcuffs less than ten minutes later.
As officers escorted him toward the entrance, he turned his head toward me.
“You’re really doing this?”
I stared back.
He sounded betrayed.
As if calling the police were worse than what he had done.
“You did this,” I said.
His expression changed then.
For a moment, I saw fear.
Not fear of jail.
Fear that the plan had failed.
At the hospital, doctors closed the cut with four stitches and ordered imaging to rule out a serious head injury. Natalie remained with me after everyone else left.
She sat in a plastic chair beside the bed, still wearing the dark green dress she had chosen for dinner.
“Why did you record them?” I asked.
She looked at the floor.
“Because Victoria did the same thing to me three years ago.”
My head throbbed.
“The same thing?”
“Not the plate.”
Her voice became bitter.
“The dinner.”
Natalie explained that after her grandmother died, she inherited a small cabin near Grand Lake. Victoria decided Marco deserved it because he enjoyed fishing. The family invited Natalie to dinner and spent hours pressuring her to transfer the title.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I signed.”
“Why?”
She rubbed her thumb across her wedding ring.
“Because Marco broke my phone against the wall and Victoria told everyone I was having a breakdown.”
I stared at her.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not where people could see.”
The room seemed suddenly smaller.
Natalie reached into her purse and removed a folded business card.
It belonged to a Denver attorney named Claire Monroe.
“She handles financial abuse and domestic violence cases,” Natalie said. “Call her before Diego’s family reaches you.”
“Why are they so desperate for my condo?”
She met my eyes.
“I don’t know yet.”
Then she added, “But Victoria doesn’t want to live there.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because she hates downtown. She refuses to park anywhere without a valet.”
Despite the pain in my head, I almost laughed.
May you like
Natalie didn’t.
“That dinner wasn’t about helping her,” she said. “Your apartment is part of something bigger.”
