Chapter 4 - The Man at the Back Door
Police reached the country house before Clarissa and Parker.
Victor Lane had disappeared into the woods, but the gasoline cans remained beside the back porch.
One basement window had been broken.
Inside, officers found oily rags near the furnace and an electronic timer taped beneath the stairs.
The device had not been activated.
Detective Mills held it inside an evidence bag.
“This was not an attempt to frighten you,” he said. “Someone intended to start a delayed fire.”
Clarissa looked toward Dustin.
He stood beside a female officer near the driveway, wrapped in Parker’s jacket.
“If we had stayed here after court…”
“You might have gone to sleep before it started.”
Parker walked toward the tree line.
“My mother knew what Victor did to his wife.”
Detective Mills joined him.
“Tell me everything.”
Victor had dated Alana for nearly five years after Parker’s father died.
He was charming in public and violent in private.
His wife had survived the house fire by escaping through a bathroom window. Victor accepted a plea deal and served eight years.
Alana ended their relationship before sentencing, but they continued exchanging letters.
“Why would she contact him now?” Clarissa asked.
Parker’s face twisted.
“Because he does things she doesn’t want traced back to her.”
Police searched Alana’s apartment.
They found letters from Victor, cash withdrawal receipts, and a printed map of Clarissa’s workplace.
Alana and Ellie were arrested before sunset.
Victor remained missing.
Clarissa took Dustin to a hotel under police protection.
Parker stayed with them.
That night, he sat beside the window while Dustin slept.
“I kept telling myself Mom was difficult because she was lonely,” he said.
Clarissa folded one of Dustin’s shirts.
“You made her loneliness more important than our safety.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He looked at her.
“I need you to understand something, Parker. You did not arrange this. You did not forge the papers. But every time I warned you, you asked me to be patient. Patience gave them access.”
“I thought drawing a line would mean losing my family.”
“And what did avoiding the line cost?”
He looked toward Dustin.
“Almost everything.”
Clarissa sat across from him.
“I don’t know whether our marriage survives this.”
He nodded slowly.
“I know.”
“I need more than promises.”
“You should.”
“I need you to tell the police everything. Even things that embarrass you.”
His face changed.
Clarissa saw it.
“There is something else.”
Parker rubbed both hands together.
“Two months ago, Ellie asked me to sign a loan guarantee.”
“For what?”
“She said Mom needed plumbing repairs.”
“How much?”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
Clarissa stood.
“What did you sign?”
“I don’t know.”
They contacted the bank.
The loan was not for plumbing.
It was a line of credit secured by Parker’s future interest in the country house.
Parker had no future interest.
But Ellie had attached a forged copy of Clarissa’s will naming Parker as sole beneficiary.
The bank had not yet released the full amount, but ten thousand dollars had been advanced.
Most of it went to Victor Lane.
“They paid him,” Detective Mills said the next morning.
“For the fire?” Clarissa asked.
“Likely.”
Parker gave a full statement.
He admitted signing blank pages for Ellie in the past.
He admitted giving Alana access to the house alarm code.
He admitted discussing Clarissa’s life insurance and schedule without asking why the information was needed.
The detective did not accuse him of participating.
That almost made it worse.
He had been careless with the private details of the people he loved.
Victor contacted Parker that afternoon.
The call came from a blocked number.
Detective Mills recorded it.
“Your mother is in trouble because of your wife,” Victor said.
“My mother is in trouble because she planned crimes.”
“You sound like her now.”
“Where are you?”
“You want the woman and the boy safe?”
Parker gripped the phone.
“Yes.”
“Bring me the recorder.”
Clarissa looked at Detective Mills.
The original recorder was in police evidence.
“Why?” Parker asked.
“It has something on it Ellie never meant to capture.”
“What?”
Victor laughed.
“Your wife thinks the plan was about the house. It was never about the house.”
The call ended.
Investigators reviewed every audio file again.
At first, they found nothing new.
Then a technician recovered a deleted recording.
It began with Ellie entering Dustin’s room alone.
She made a phone call.
“Victor, Mom wants the country house damaged, not destroyed.”
A man answered.
“I don’t do half jobs.”
“Clarissa needs to survive.”
“Why?”
“Because she has to sign the adoption papers.”
Clarissa looked at Parker.
“What adoption papers?”
The recording continued.
“She won’t sign Dustin over voluntarily,” Ellie said. “But if the boy believes she chose Parker’s new baby, he’ll ask to leave.”
Victor responded, “What new baby?”
Ellie laughed.
“The one Parker doesn’t know about yet.”
Parker’s face drained of color.
Clarissa’s miscarriage had occurred six months earlier.
She was not pregnant.
Unless Ellie meant someone else.
The technician isolated another conversation from the dining room.
Alana said, “Once the baby arrives, Parker won’t need Clarissa’s boy.”
Ellie answered, “He’ll need a wife who can give him one.”
Clarissa looked at Parker.
“Who?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Then the hotel receptionist approached Detective Mills with a message.
A woman was waiting in the lobby asking for Parker.
She introduced herself as Jenna Cole, a receptionist from his repair shop.
She was visibly pregnant.
When Parker entered the lobby, Jenna began crying.
“Your mother told me you were leaving Clarissa,” she said.
Clarissa felt the room turn cold.
Parker stared at her.
“I never said that.”
Jenna touched her stomach.
May you like
“Then why did Alana tell me you wanted to raise this baby with me?”
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