Chương 6
“Who said that?”
“Silver lady.”
Renata had taken the toy and placed it somewhere in the linen room, probably to keep Emma from following Clara upstairs. Emma had returned for it. Pino, already familiar with the child from her hidden visits, had helped retrieve it.
That explained how Emma entered the room.
It did not explain who planted the box.
Dominic closed the lid. “We need an outside forensic team.”
Lorenzo looked at Clara.
She looked back without blinking. “Yes.”
He was not used to being overruled by a maid and his own security chief in the same second. He found the experience unpleasant enough to be useful.
“Call Mara Ellison,” he told Dominic.
Mara was a former federal prosecutor who now conducted internal investigations for companies rich enough to fear both scandal and prison. She disliked Lorenzo, charged him accordingly, and documented every instruction he gave her.
Dominic lifted his phone. “She’ll insist on control of the evidence.”
“She can have it.”
“And access to payroll, security, staff files, vendor accounts—”
“All of it.”
Nisha set down her coffee. “I’d like that repeated in front of witnesses.”
Lorenzo turned to her.
She raised both hands. “I have become reckless from lack of sleep.”
“You heard him,” Clara said.
“Better.”
Mara arrived shortly before eight with two forensic technicians, an employment attorney, and the expression of someone who had expected Lorenzo Duca’s mansion to become a crime scene eventually and was annoyed it had happened during dinner.
She was forty-four, compact, and dressed in a navy suit beneath a raincoat. She refused coffee, refused the blue drawing room, and chose the staff dining area because it had one entrance and no decorative objects that could conceal recording devices.
Her first act was to order the gates opened.
“No,” Lorenzo said.
“Then I leave.”
“Someone inside arranged evidence against an employee.”
“Which does not authorize you to confine forty-three people.”
“They can leave through the east gate.”
“Then open the others.”
“Why?”
“Because your preference is not law, and because frightened employees become unreliable witnesses.”
Dominic stood near the wall, saying nothing.
Lorenzo opened the gates.
Within fifteen minutes, more than half the evening staff left. A few hurried out without coats. Others waited for rides under the portico, whispering into phones. News would spread. By morning, people who had never entered the Duca mansion would know that something had happened involving a stolen watch, a crying child, and locked gates.
Mara watched them go. “That was going to happen whether you liked it or not.”
“I’m aware.”
“You’re behaving as if awareness and acceptance are the same.”
“They often have the same result.”
“No. One produces fewer enemies.”
She established a chain of custody for the watch, keys, dismissal notice, cashbox, and flash drive. She photographed each item where it lay and sealed it under numbered tags. Clara signed nothing until the employment attorney explained each form. Renata requested her own counsel and was permitted to call one.
When Mara asked Lorenzo to leave the room during Clara’s interview, he almost laughed.
She did not.
“This is my house.”
“That is precisely the problem.”
He stood in the corridor with Pino and listened to voices too low to understand. For once, the house continued without his permission. Water moved through pipes. A delivery driver argued at the kitchen entrance about returning empty wine crates. Someone ran a vacuum in the upstairs gallery until another staff member told them to stop because evidence technicians were working.
At nine twenty, Lorenzo realized he had not eaten since morning. He found a plate in the kitchen beneath plastic wrap. Cold chicken, potatoes, green beans. Nisha was gone, but she had left a note on top.
RICH MEN ALSO EAT DURING EMERGENCIES.
Below that she had drawn an antacid tablet.
He ate standing at the counter.
Clara entered carrying a sleeping Emma. She stopped when she saw him, as though kitchens belonged to staff only until owners appeared.
“Mara finished?”
“For now.”
“You should take Emma home.”
Clara looked toward the rain-black windows. “Dominic said my apartment might not be safe.”
“Because Arthur has your address.”
“Arthur had my address yesterday too.”
“Yesterday you weren’t a witness.”
She shifted Emma higher. The child’s bow had come loose. Clara held it between two fingers.
“Do you have somewhere else to stay?” Lorenzo asked.
“My cousin’s place in Queens.”
“Go there.”
“She has four children and one bedroom.”
“Take a hotel.”
“With what money?”
“I’ll pay.”
“No.”
The refusal came before he finished speaking.
He set down his fork. “This isn’t charity.”
“What is it?”
“Protection.”
“From a danger created in your house by people you hired.”
Her voice remained low so she would not wake Emma. That restraint sharpened every word.
Lorenzo wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Then call it compensation.”
“Compensation comes with paperwork.”
“Mara can arrange it.”
Clara’s expression changed slightly. The mention of Mara made the offer safer.
“I want the hotel in my name,” she said. “I want the room number given only to me, my cousin, and the investigator. Not your guards.”
“Dominic will need—”
“No.”
He felt the old instinct rise: the desire to end resistance by making the decision larger than the person resisting it. He had used that instinct in boardrooms, restaurants, court corridors, and once beside an open grave. It had rarely failed him.
Emma breathed against Clara’s shoulder. Pino sat beside them, looking at Lorenzo as though waiting to see whether he had learned anything.
“All right,” he said.
Clara nodded once.
“Your phone may be evidence,” he added.
“Mara copied it.”
“Keep it charged.”
“I know how phones work.”
“I didn’t suggest otherwise.”
“You often sound like you’re suggesting otherwise.”
He looked down at the cold potatoes. “People usually don’t critique me in my kitchen.”
“Maybe they should.”
A laugh escaped her, sudden and unwilling. She covered it with her hand.
May you like
Lorenzo stared.
“I’m sorry,” she said, not looking sorry. “This is a bad night.”
