PART 2
I drove straight to Henrietta’s house with Matilda beside me, watching the rearview mirror until Pamela’s neighborhood disappeared behind us.
Only then did my daughter finally breathe normally.
Henrietta opened the door, saw Matilda’s face, and stopped asking questions.
Within twenty minutes, Lincoln arrived carrying a laptop and an encrypted drive containing everything recovered from the security system.
“There’s more,” he said.
Much more.
The recordings stretched back nearly four months.
Pamela had carefully manufactured every “episode” she later described to me as evidence of Matilda’s worsening emotional condition. Some videos began only after Pamela had added drops to a drink. Others showed her provoking Matilda until the frightened child cried or shouted.
Then Lincoln opened a folder recovered from a synchronized cloud account.
Inside were messages between Pamela and Spencer.
The plan was chillingly methodical.
They wanted me convinced that Matilda required residential psychiatric treatment. Once she was placed outside my home, Pamela intended to pressure me into restructuring the trust controlling Beatrice’s La Jolla property.
Spencer apparently believed the arrangement could eventually be challenged if Matilda were declared incapable of managing her inheritance.
Henrietta gripped the edge of the table.
“Gregory, you need the police.”
“I know.”
But Lincoln raised one hand.
“Wait.”
He opened another video.
The timestamp was from three days earlier.
Pamela sat at our kitchen island while Spencer stood beside her. His face was clearly visible.
Then Spencer placed several documents on the counter.
Pamela laughed.
“Two more videos and Gregory will believe anything we tell him.”
Spencer answered quietly.
“He doesn’t actually have to believe it. He only has to sign.”
My stomach turned.
But the next sentence changed everything.
Pamela leaned closer and whispered, “And once he signs, Matilda won’t be the only one we need declared incompetent.”
Silence swallowed the room.
They had never intended to stop with my daughter.
Lincoln froze the image and enlarged one of the documents lying between them.
My name appeared across the top.
Beneath it was a medical evaluation I had never undergone, bearing the signature of a physician I had never met.
Then Henrietta stared at the doctor’s name and went completely pale.
“I know him,” she whispered. “He signed Beatrice’s death certificate.”
