Chapter 10 - Nora's account
Nora's signature was genuine.
That was the problem.
She remembered signing something.
Her father had approached her five years earlier, before she met me.
He said he needed temporary authority to restructure an investment account he'd created for her as a child.
She signed.
He gained control.
The $400,000 transfer happened later.
She never saw it.
“So he used you too.”
Nora nodded.
“I think so.”
I wasn't ready to absolve her.
She had still entered my life under false pretenses.
Still concealed her relationship to Claire.
Still grabbed Lily.
Still hid the note beside my tea.
But the financial evidence suggested Andrew exploited his own daughter exactly as he exploited Rachel Carter.
Then the police—no, user prompt says no police only video; story can realistically involve authorities, but keep focus—formal investigation around the contaminated tea developed further.
Andrew denied entering my home.
Neighbor footage contradicted him.
He denied touching the cup.
That remained unresolved.
Then fingerprint analysis produced a surprise.
The sideboard cup carried Nora's prints.
Mine.
And Eleanor Price's.
Eleanor.
She had insisted she never touched the tea.
I confronted her.
She closed her eyes.
“I moved the cup.”
“When?”
“Before Andrew arrived.”
“Why?”
“I thought it was his.”
“What?”
Eleanor had been watching Andrew.
She knew he intended to enter the house.
She entered first.
Found the prepared cup and note.
Moved it.
Then Nora later replaced the first cup with another from the sideboard.
A chain of actions so tangled nobody could confidently say which cup had been intended for whom.
“Did you contaminate anything?”
“No.”
“Did Andrew?”
“I didn't see him do it.”
Finally.
No invented certainty.
Then Eleanor admitted she had brought a small bottle into the house.
My anger surged.
“What was in it?”
A chemical test reagent.
She had been searching for a specific substance used to mark old Mercer financial documents.
Why?
William Mercer used invisible security markers on originals.
Claire had discovered that some “original” contracts were actually replacements.
The reagent helped distinguish them.
Could that chemical have contaminated the cup?
Potentially.
But the tea contained a different compound.
So the danger remained real.
Then Lily remembered something else.
The gray-haired man hadn't touched the teacup.
He touched the sugar bowl.
We tested it.
Contaminated.
Far more heavily than the tea.
Someone had deliberately altered the sugar.
And I was the only person at that table who took sugar in tea.
This wasn't random.
Whoever did it knew my habits.
May you like
Andrew knew almost nothing about me.
Nora knew everything.
