Chương 6
“She had evidence that I approved invoices I shouldn’t have approved.”
Maya stepped forward. “What invoices?”
Marcus looked at her. “I’m speaking with an attorney this afternoon.”
“That’s wise,” Maya said. “It doesn’t answer the question.”
“I can’t answer more until I do.”
Rosa studied him. “Did you send for Elena?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you told me last month that if Vanessa ever moved the cage out of storage, I should call someone who wasn’t afraid of her.”
Elena turned to Rosa.
Rosa looked faintly embarrassed. “I did not expect him to wait until after he moved it.”
Marcus’s eyes reddened, but he did not cry. “I kept thinking I could stop her before it went that far.”
“You thought about yourself,” Rosa said.
“Yes.”
The simplicity of the admission took some force from her anger, though not enough to resemble forgiveness.
Marcus reached into his jacket slowly. Deputy Holt’s hand moved toward her holster.
“It’s a key card,” he said.
“Take it out with two fingers.”
He did. “Vanessa changed the administrator codes, but this still opens the estate office. There are files inside. Paper files. She stopped trusting the cloud after an audit last year.”
Maya did not take the card. “Give it to Deputy Holt.”
Marcus did.
“Is there a blue ledger?” Elena asked.
His eyes flicked toward her. “Yes.”
“What is it?”
“A handwritten record of payments that couldn’t go through the normal accounts.”
“Where?”
He hesitated. “It was in Vanessa’s desk safe yesterday morning.”
“Combination?”
“I don’t know.”
Elena watched him for another second. “Do you know what’s in the bank box?”
“No.”
Vanessa had not known either. That mattered. Elena did not yet understand how.
Inside the mansion, the air smelled of lemon polish and cut flowers. Someone had replaced the arrangements in the entrance hall while Rosa was confined outside. White lilies stood beneath a portrait of Rosa’s husband, their scent thick enough to make Elena’s throat ache. A housekeeping crew had been scheduled before the arrest and had arrived at eight, unaware of what had happened. Holt sent them home after taking names.
Rosa stopped beneath the portrait. Her husband, Gabriel, had been painted at sixty-three, one hand in a pocket and a smile beginning at one corner of his mouth. He had died eleven years earlier. Elena remembered him mostly through motion: tapping a pen against a newspaper, turning steaks too often on the grill, pretending not to sleep during baseball games.
“Vanessa ordered the portrait cleaned last month,” Rosa said.
“Why?”
“She said the house needed to photograph well.”
The proposed sale had already begun shaping the rooms.
Maya obtained the full recorded deed before they reached the library. The document bore Rosa’s name and what appeared to be her signature. It had been notarized remotely. An attached certificate stated that Rosa appeared by secure video, presented identification, and acknowledged signing voluntarily.
“I did no such thing,” Rosa said.
Maya enlarged the signature on her laptop. “Does it resemble yours?”
“Yes.”
“Could it have been copied from another document?”
“Of course it could. Vanessa has thousands.”
Elena studied the date. “Where were you that day?”
“At home.”
“Who saw you?”
Rosa’s lips pressed together. “Vanessa. Marcus. A physical therapist in the morning.”
“The notarization time is 6:42 p.m.,” Maya said. “The therapist won’t help.”
“What about security video?” Elena asked.
“Disabled for maintenance,” Holt said.
“Convenient.”
“Maybe. But convenience isn’t proof.”
The library’s green books stood exactly where Rosa had said, leather-bound volumes bought by the yard decades earlier because an interior designer believed every wealthy family required unreadable law books. Behind them was Maya’s card and a folded note in Rosa’s handwriting: If I say I changed my mind, ask me without Vanessa in the room.
Maya read it twice.
“You wrote this when?” she asked.
“Three months ago.”
“Why hide it here?”
“Vanessa never touched books unless they contained invoices.”
Elena moved to the desk. One drawer sat slightly crooked. She remembered her grandfather cursing that drawer in two languages while refusing to let anyone replace it. She pulled once. It stuck. She lifted the handle, shifted it left, and it opened.
Inside lay old stationery, dried pens, a magnifying glass, and a photograph of Elena at seventeen in a soccer uniform she had not thought about in years. Rosa stood beside her in the picture, younger and broader, wearing sunglasses too large for her face.
Elena picked it up.
“You said that shirt was lucky,” Rosa said.
“We lost the game.”
“You scored.”
“We still lost.”
“That did not matter to me.”
Elena returned the photograph to the drawer. “It mattered to everyone else on the team.”
Rosa looked at the back of Elena’s head. “Yes. You have always preferred being responsible to being loved.”
Maya closed the laptop halfway. Holt pretended to examine a bookshelf.
Elena shut the drawer harder than necessary. It jammed again.
The gold key opened a bank box in Rosa’s name at a private branch downtown. The bank would not grant access that afternoon because Rosa’s identification had expired and Vanessa had reported her passport missing. Maya argued with a manager for forty minutes while Rosa sat in a lobby chair beneath an abstract painting and Elena stood nearby trying not to look like armed pressure. The manager remained polite and immovable. He required current identification or a court order.
“This is why she took my wallet,” Rosa said after they left.
Maya stopped on the sidewalk. “Vanessa took your wallet?”
“Yesterday morning. She said she was updating the insurance copies.”
“Why didn’t you mention that?”
“I have mentioned many things.”
“Not that.”
Rosa lifted both hands. “Then I failed the interrogation.”
“It isn’t an interrogation.”
May you like
“It feels like one.”
A city bus sighed at the curb. People moved around them carrying shopping bags and iced drinks, glancing at Elena’s uniform and then away. The ordinary traffic made Rosa’s missing wallet feel both smaller and more dangerous. Without identification, she could not easily access her own evidence. Without evidence, the recorded deed remained a public fact that Vanessa’s attorneys could use.
