Chương 10
Vincent accepted that too.
Leon arranged for them to sleep in the guest suite beside Mrs. Alvarez’s room. Sophia objected to the silk bedding, the antique furniture, and the absence of a lock on the interior door. Vincent had maintenance install a lock within twenty minutes.
At nine, he found Sophia in the downstairs laundry room.
She was folding towels.
“They have people for that,” he said.
“I am people for that.”
“You are not working tonight.”
“I don’t know what else to do with my hands.”
He leaned against the doorframe. The dryers hummed. A loose button clicked inside one of them at irregular intervals.
“Velez told me you gave a complete statement,” he said.
“I gave the statement I should have given five years ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She folded another towel, pressing the corners together.
“After Daniel died, Damian came to the cottage. He brought a check for thirty thousand dollars.”
“Blood money.”
“He called it life insurance.”
“Did you take it?”
“Yes.”
Vincent’s face changed.
Sophia saw it and became defensive before he spoke. “I had no income. The shop was in debt. Emma had pneumonia. I took it.”
“I did not say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Where did the money come from?”
“Moretti Family Relief Fund.”
Vincent closed his eyes.
That fund supported employees after death or illness. Celeste had created it.
Damian had used Celeste’s money to purchase Sophia’s silence about Celeste’s murder.
“I signed the approval,” Vincent said.
Sophia’s hands stopped.
“Damian put papers in front of me after the funeral. I signed everything.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I did not ask.”
They listened to the button tumbling in the dryer.
Sophia said, “He told me Daniel had been drinking for months. He showed me receipts. Bar charges. A hotel room with a woman’s name. He said Daniel planned to leave us.”
“Was any of it true?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said he didn’t drink.”
“He didn’t drink with me.”
The answer held five years of doubt.
“Damian said if I accused him, he would show the police Daniel’s debts and the recording would look like blackmail. He said Emma would grow up knowing her father was a criminal. Then he offered me the cottage and a job.”
“And you accepted.”
“Yes.”
“Why stay close to him?”
“So I could see him coming.”
Vincent looked at the towels stacked between them.
“You let Emma near him for five years.”
“No. I watched every room he entered. I changed her school pickup list twice. I slept with a chair under the cottage doorknob until she was six.”
Her voice rose, then fell when she remembered the sleeping rooms above.
“I stayed because poor women don’t disappear safely,” she said. “We move somewhere cheaper, and our names stay on forms. We use the same Social Security numbers. We need jobs that call old employers. We send children to schools that ask for records. Damian knew my mother’s address. He knew Daniel’s debts. He knew everything.”
Vincent said, “You could have come to me.”
Sophia looked at him with exhausted disbelief.
“Celeste came to you.”
He had no answer.
The dryer stopped.
The sudden silence made the room feel smaller.
Sophia opened it and found the loose button. She set it on top of the machine.
“Emma likes you,” she said.
“She told you that?”
“No. She complains about people she likes.”
“She said I yell at everyone.”
“She wasn’t wrong.”
“I am trying not to yell at her.”
“That is a low standard.”
“It is where I am starting.”
Sophia folded the final towel.
As she passed him, Vincent said, “I am sorry.”
She stopped.
“For what?”
The question was not cruel. It was practical. There were too many possibilities.
“For believing Celeste killed Arya.”
Sophia’s expression softened, then guarded itself again. “That was done to you.”
“I helped.”
“Yes.”
She left him in the laundry room.
The next morning, Vincent sat across from Velez in an interview room at state police headquarters. The walls were beige, the table bolted down, the coffee worse than anything Mrs. Alvarez had ever burned.
Velez placed a copy of Celeste’s final message between them.
I cannot let you keep taking her from me. By tonight, this ends.
“What was happening in your marriage?” she asked.
Vincent looked at the words.
“We were fighting about Damian.”
“Only Damian?”
“No.”
“What else?”
“Work. My travel. Her spending.”
“What spending?”
“Private investigators. Accountants. A therapist I thought was encouraging her to leave.”
“Was the therapist encouraging her to leave?”
“I never asked.”
Velez waited.
Vincent rubbed his thumb against the faint scar on his palm. He had gotten it opening a bottle with a knife at seventeen. Damian had bandaged it in the back room of a restaurant after telling him he was too stupid to bleed responsibly.
“Celeste believed I used Arya to punish her,” he said.
“How?”
“If Celeste refused a public event, I took Arya without her. If she criticized Damian in front of staff, I said she was making the house unstable. I threatened to ask for primary custody.”
“Did you mean it?”
“In the moment.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the truest one.”
Velez tapped the message. “Could ‘taking her from me’ refer to custody?”
“Yes.”
“Could ‘this ends’ refer to leaving you?”
“Yes.”
“Why did investigators treat it as evidence of murder-suicide?”
“Damian told them Celeste had threatened self-harm.”
“Had she?”
Vincent looked up. “Not to me.”
“Did Damian provide documentation?”
“A summary from a psychiatrist.”
“Celeste’s psychiatrist?”
“I thought so.”
Velez opened another file. “The doctor was a consultant to a corporate wellness firm paid by Moretti Transit. He met Celeste once at a charity dinner.”
May you like
Vincent stared at her.
“The summary was not a medical record,” Velez said. “It was a memorandum Damian provided to investigators. It described remarks the doctor said he overheard. The doctor died two years ago, but his former assistant found appointment calendars. Celeste was never his patient.”
