Chapter 4 - ROSE’S LAST WEEK
Rose’s notebook was not a diary.
It was an evidence log.
Dates.
Bank transfers.
Threats.
Names of witnesses.
Photographs she had stored elsewhere.
She had numbered every page.
The final week began with one sentence:
Arthur knows I found the policy.
The next entry described a four-million-dollar life-insurance policy issued eight months earlier.
Rose believed her signature had been forged.
She also discovered Arthur had taken loans through shell companies connected to a luxury marina project.
He owed investors more than two million dollars.
Natalie Price worked as his project-development director.
Rose wrote that the affair began during fundraising trips.
She confronted Arthur.
He told her the marriage was already over and that no court would give her the girls once his experts finished documenting her “instability.”
Three days before her death, she photographed bruising around her wrist.
Arthur had taken her phone during an argument and squeezed until she released it.
She did not call police.
She feared he would file his custody petition first.
The notebook contained that failure without excusing it.
I kept thinking of my last call with Rose.
She asked whether the girls could stay with me for a weekend.
I said I had a medical appointment and suggested the following week.
She became quiet.
I asked whether everything was all right.
She said yes.
I accepted it because fathers want adult daughters to be all right even when their voices say otherwise.
Detective Holloway obtained a warrant for the townhouse and electronic systems.
The staircase camera was missing.
Its wall mount remained.
The wire had been cut cleanly rather than damaged.
Arthur claimed a repairman removed it.
No repair invoice existed.
Rose’s notebook contained a sketch of the upstairs hallway.
Above Lucy’s bedroom she had drawn a square and written:
BACKUP CARD — ATTIC INSULATION — LEFT OF VENT.
Police searched under warrant.
An evidence technician found a sealed memory card wrapped inside a freezer bag.
Rose had installed a second camera herself after suspecting Arthur accessed her office.
The device did not face the staircase directly.
It captured the upstairs landing and front entry.
At 10:58 p.m., Arthur entered with Natalie.
At 11:09, Rose came upstairs carrying a folder.
At 11:17, all three entered the upstairs office.
At 11:39, Natalie left the office alone and walked downstairs.
At 11:45, Arthur crossed the landing carrying the staircase camera.
At 11:52, Natalie returned upstairs.
At midnight, both moved quickly toward the stairs.
No image showed the fall.
At 12:14 a.m., paramedics entered.
Arthur had waited twenty-two minutes after the last visible movement near the staircase before calling 911.
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The final clip showed Natalie leaving after the ambulance.
Rose’s phone was in her hand.
