Chương 5
I looked at Lily.
“What issue?”
“We reviewed the electronic lock record.”
My mouth went dry.
“And?”
“Your room was opened with three different key cards during the afternoon.”
“That makes sense.”
I had a key.
My parents had a connecting room.
Vanessa had apparently helped herself to everything else.
“No,” Owen said.
“It doesn’t.”
I waited.
“Your original reservation was issued two keys.”
“Yes.”
“The third key was created at 1:41 p.m.”
Fifteen minutes before Lily was put outside.
“Who requested it?”
“That’s what concerned us.”
My fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
“Who?”
“Our system shows the replacement key was issued after a woman presented identification and stated that she was Claire Bennett.”
I said nothing.
Owen continued.
“The desk agent remembers her.”
Across from me, Lily held up her picture.
“Mommy, does this look like a dolphin?”
I looked at the purple creature with green wings and a yellow crown.
“Yes, baby.”
“It’s the queen dolphin.”
“It’s beautiful.”
She smiled and went back to coloring.
I turned toward the window.
“Did the woman look like me?”
Owen’s voice was quiet.
“According to the employee, she looked enough like the identification photograph that he didn’t question it.”
Vanessa and I had the same pale eyes.
The same narrow chin.
People had mistaken old photographs of us for each other since we were teenagers.
But she did not have my driver’s license.
At least, she should not have.
I reached for my purse.
The inside pocket was unzipped.
I always zipped it.
Always.
My wallet was there.
My license was there.
Nothing appeared missing.
Then I remembered my suitcase lying open when I returned to room 814.
I remembered Vanessa sitting on my bed before Dad called me downstairs.
I remembered leaving my purse beside the lamp because I had only taken my phone and room key to the lobby.
The room key she later claimed Lily had no right to use.
The room she said was for family.
“Owen.”
“Yes?”
“Please preserve everything.”
“We already have.”
“I mean everything.”
“The lock report, internal notes, surveillance, the front desk entry, and the call record have all been retained.”
I swallowed.
“Why?”
There was a pause.
“Because our general manager no longer believes this was simply a dispute between guests.”
Neither did I.
The first consequence arrived before lunch.
It came in the form of a voicemail from the hotel’s general manager asking me not to return to the property until he had spoken with me privately.
I listened to it twice while Lily colored another dolphin.
Then my phone rang again.
This time it was Mark.
I almost let it go to voicemail.
Instead, I walked far enough from Lily that she could not hear me and answered.
“Where are you?”
His voice was low and hurried.
“With Lily.”
“I know that.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Claire, I just got back from golf and your sister is losing her mind.”
“That sounds like something Vanessa should handle.”
“What happened yesterday?”
I looked through the lobby windows at an elderly couple trying to fit a beach umbrella into the trunk of a compact car.
“What did Vanessa tell you?”
“That Lily had a tantrum, you overreacted, and now the hotel is threatening to remove us.”
I turned away from the window.
“Remove you?”
“Management called the room ten minutes ago.”
“What did they say?”
“They want everyone associated with the reservation downstairs at noon.”
“Did they say why?”
“No.”
He hesitated.
“Vanessa says you filed some kind of complaint.”
“I reported what happened.”
“What happened, Claire?”
There was something in his voice I had not heard the previous day.
Fear.
Not fear for Lily.
Not yet.
Fear that he was standing inside a situation whose shape he did not understand.
“Ask your wife.”
“I did.”
“And?”
“She threw my golf shoes at me.”
Despite everything, I closed my eyes for a second.
“That sounds informative.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“No.”
“It isn’t.”
Mark lowered his voice further.
“Did she touch Lily?”
“I don’t know.”
That was the truth.
The surveillance had shown Lily leaving the room, but not enough of the doorway to tell me whether she had been pushed, pulled, or ordered out.
The original words Lily had used with me were Aunt Vanessa made me go outside.
I had been too angry to ask for physical details.
Rachel had warned me not to interrogate her.
Children, she said, could begin trying to give adults the answers they sensed adults wanted.
“I need you to tell me what you know.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“Talk to Vanessa.”
“She won’t talk to me.”
“That isn’t my problem.”
He exhaled into the phone.
Then he said, “Did she use your ID?”
My skin prickled.
“Why would you ask that?”
Silence.
“Mark.”
“I found something.”
“What?”
“Your driver’s license.”
“My license is in my wallet.”
“Not the original.”
I gripped the phone.
“What are you talking about?”
“I found a photocopy.”
“Where?”
“Vanessa’s beach bag.”
I said nothing.
“I wasn’t searching her stuff,” he added quickly.
“She told me her room key was in the side pocket.”
“Why would she have a copy of my license?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
I could not.
But an older memory surfaced with unpleasant clarity.
Three months earlier, my mother had asked me to text her a photograph of my license because she said the rental company needed information for the reservation.
I had sent it without thinking.
The reservation had later been booked entirely under my name.
“Take a picture of it,” I said.
“What?”
“The photocopy.”
“Claire, I don’t want to get dragged into whatever this is.”
“You called me.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to pick sides.”
“There aren’t sides to a six-year-old sitting alone in a hallway for three hours.”
He went silent.
I heard a door close near him.
Then Vanessa’s muffled voice.
“Who are you talking to?”
May you like
Mark whispered something I could not make out.
Vanessa’s voice became louder.
