Chương 3
After that, only fragments.
“I think so.”
Celeste’s lawyer looked up.
Alvarez did not.
“Think carefully.”
“I sent the video. Then I came through the west service door. I grabbed the glass. I—”
“You dropped something near the musicians,” a voice said.
Mara turned.
Tasha Green, another server, stood behind the police line. She was forty-two, broad-shouldered, and still carrying a tray because nobody had told the catering staff where to put anything.
“You dropped your phone,” Tasha continued. “A man picked it up.”
“What man?”
“Security. Tall, shaved head. Gray suit.”
Grant.
Mara stood too quickly. The paramedic caught her shoulder.
“He has it.”
Alvarez rose.
“Describe him.”
Daniel did it for her.
Within minutes, Grant Pell’s photograph was circulating among officers inside the hotel. His radio was found in a service stairwell. His office was empty. The local security server had been shut down at 9:46 p.m., five minutes after the timestamp on Mara’s recording.
By ten-fifteen, police had blocked the underground garage.
By ten-thirty, they knew Grant’s car was already gone.
Celeste remained in the ballroom until an officer escorted her to a private interview room. She was not handcuffed. Sayer made certain every nearby phone captured that detail.
Daniel asked why she was being allowed to leave the ballroom.
“Because suspicion is not an arrest warrant,” Alvarez told him.
“You saw the video.”
“I saw a video on a watch.”
“She poured something into my drink.”
“It appears that way.”
“Appears?”
Alvarez glanced at Mara, then at the evidence team working on the floor.
“We are going to test what was in the glass. We are going to recover the original footage. We are going to establish where the clip came from, whether it was altered, who had access to the room, who had access to the drink, and whether Ms. Rowan had a reason to harm you.”
Daniel’s expression became colder with every sentence.
“She had a reason.”
Mara looked at him.
Alvarez did too.
“What reason?”
Daniel did not answer.
That silence followed him to the hospital.
Mara went in a different ambulance, though she argued against it until the paramedic threatened to document her refusal and let her collapse wherever she pleased. She was placed on a narrow bed beneath white lights while a nurse asked the same questions three times: name, date of birth, allergies, last meal, possibility of pregnancy.
“No,” Mara said.
“No allergies?”
“No pregnancy.”
“What was your last meal?”
“Half a dinner roll.”
The nurse looked up.
“Today?”
Mara thought about it.
“And coffee.”
“That isn’t a meal.”
“I know.”
The nurse cleaned the scrape again and asked whether Mara had somewhere safe to stay. Mara said yes because the truthful answer required explanation.
Her mother lived with her in a two-bedroom apartment in Queens, where the radiator clicked all winter and the kitchen drawer beneath the sink came off its track whenever someone opened it too quickly. It was safe in the ordinary sense. The locks worked. The landlord changed the hallway bulbs. Their upstairs neighbor played television too loudly but carried groceries for Ellen Quinn when her knees hurt.
It did not feel safe if Grant Pell knew Mara’s name.
A uniformed officer waited outside the curtain. Another took photographs of the bruises on her wrist and shoulder. Mara signed forms without reading all of them.
At 12:38 a.m., Daniel appeared at the opening in the curtain.
He had changed nothing except his shoes. The wet formal pair had been taken as evidence, so he wore black hotel slippers beneath his tuxedo trousers. The sight would have been funny on anyone else.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Mara said.
“I was told you were conscious.”
“That isn’t permission.”
He paused.
“You’re right.”
He started to leave.
Mara watched him take two steps.
“What was the reason?” she asked.
He turned.
“The detective asked why Celeste would want you dead.”
Daniel looked past Mara toward the wall monitor, where her heart rate pulsed in green light.
“I found discrepancies in the company accounts.”
“How many discrepancies?”
“Eighteen million dollars.”
Mara let out a breath.
“That seems like more than one.”
“It was spread across renovation contracts, consulting fees, and property acquisitions. I confronted her privately last week. She said our auditors were confused.”
“Were they?”
“No.”
“What were you going to do?”
“Remove her as chief financial officer tomorrow morning.”
“And she knew?”
“She suspected.”
“You told someone.”
“My attorney. Isaac. My board chair.”
“Three people.”
Daniel’s eyes shifted toward the curtain.
“You think one of them warned her.”
“I think somebody did.”
He rubbed the pale mark where the smartwatch had been.
Mara noticed his left hand trembling. He closed it.
“What happened to the money?” she asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
“Did she steal it?”
“She approved the transfers.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No,” he said after a moment. “I don’t think she stole all of it.”
Mara waited.
Daniel seemed unused to silence that did not exist for his comfort.
“Our company expanded too quickly,” he said. “She made several decisions I supported. Some failed. She concealed the losses to protect a sale we were negotiating.”
“You supported the decisions.”
“Yes.”
“But not the hiding.”
“No.”
“That distinction probably feels larger to you than it does to everyone who lost money.”
His jaw tightened.
“You don’t know what happened.”
“Neither do you. That’s why you’re wearing hotel slippers in an emergency room.”
He looked down at them.
For the first time since entering, something almost human passed across his face. Not a smile. More like surprise that the world had remained capable of absurdity.
“They’re very uncomfortable,” he said.
Mara leaned back against the pillow.
“Good.”
He accepted that.
A nurse entered and told him visiting hours were over, though they both knew visiting hours had been over before he arrived. Daniel thanked her and left without asking for an exception.
May you like
At two in the morning, Alvarez returned.
The detective carried Mara’s work bag, which had been recovered from the employee locker room. Her wallet was inside. So were two hair ties, a packet of crackers, an unopened electricity bill, and a paperback swollen from being dropped in a bathtub months earlier.
