Vanessa's Interview
Chapter 08 - Vanessa's Interview
Detective Voss interviewed Vanessa three days later, in a formal setting away from the mansion, Ethan and Sophie waiting anxiously at home for any update Voss was willing to share once the interview concluded.
"She denied everything," Voss told them that evening, over the phone. "The financial discrepancies, she attributed to standard vendor relations complexity. The hallway footage, she claimed she was retrieving a jacket she'd left upstairs earlier that day, nothing more."
"Did you believe her," Ethan asked.
"My personal belief isn't what matters for building a case," Voss said carefully. "What matters is whether the physical evidence supports prosecution regardless of what she claims in an interview. The forensic document analysis is still pending final confirmation, and once that comes back conclusively, her financial explanation becomes considerably harder to sustain."
Sophie listened to the update with a complicated mixture of relief and lingering unease, the specific frustration of watching a process move at the deliberate, careful pace the justice system required, when every instinct in her body wanted immediate, definitive resolution.
"What happens if the forensic analysis isn't conclusive enough," Sophie asked.
"Then we continue building the case through other means," Voss said. "The financial records alone, properly audited by a forensic accountant, may establish motive strongly enough on their own, especially combined with the security footage timeline."
Ethan hung up the phone and sat with Sophie in their small upstairs study, the same room where they'd first fully unpacked the danger they were facing days earlier.
"I keep waiting to feel something like closure," he said. "Every update just seems to open up more waiting instead."
"I know," Sophie said. "I think that's just what this actually looks like, in real life, instead of however we imagined it would resolve."
Vanessa, released after her interview pending further investigation, returned to the mansion that same evening, a decision that filled both Ethan and Sophie with a specific, unsettled dread neither of them had anticipated needing to navigate.
"She's still living under the same roof as us," Sophie said. "While actively under investigation for trying to kill me."
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"I'm calling Harold in the morning about getting her formally removed from any shared property access," Ethan said. "I should have done that the moment this became a police matter instead of a family conversation."
Sophie nodded, exhaustion settling deep into her bones, the fear from the balcony still very much alive every time she heard footsteps in the hallway outside their room.
