Chương 9
The cloth stopper beneath the cap contained a fiber consistent with the ivory blouse Celeste had worn the night Elias convulsed.
That detail reached the press before she left the station.
Reporters waited on the sidewalk.
They shouted questions about her hospital resignation, her relationship with Elias, and whether she had expected to inherit money.
One man asked whether she had fallen in love with the mafia boss she was accused of poisoning.
Celeste stopped walking.
Detective Vega touched her elbow. “Don’t.”
Celeste looked directly at the reporter. “You should be embarrassed.”
The sentence became the headline.
By morning, strangers had found her mother’s address.
June took their mother to a hotel near the airport. Celeste returned to her apartment and discovered the lock had been forced.
Nothing valuable was missing.
Her kitchen drawers stood open. The mattress had been lifted. Papers covered the floor. Someone had removed every book from the shelves and stacked them in neat piles, as though the search had been hurried but not careless.
Her spare black notebooks were gone.
Celeste called Vega from the hallway and did not enter until police arrived.
The detective examined the broken lock. “Could be reporters.”
“Reporters take photographs.”
“Could be Cade people.”
“They don’t need my old grocery lists.”
“What was in the notebooks?”
“Patient schedules, medication observations, household routines.”
“Anything about the vials?”
“No. The current notebook is with me.”
“Anything about Dr. Neri?”
Celeste thought.
Six months earlier, Neri had visited Elias after midnight during an episode of vomiting and confusion. He had changed a medication dose without updating the printed chart. Celeste had challenged him. Neri told her the new instructions would appear in the electronic system by morning.
They never did.
She had written the temporary dose in an older notebook.
Someone had stolen it.
“The notebooks showed inconsistencies,” she said.
Vega nodded slowly. “That sounds less like a reporter.”
Celeste spent the night at June’s hotel.
Her mother watched television with the sound off while news anchors discussed arsenic, organized crime, and the dangerous intimacy of private caregiving.
“You look terrible,” her mother said.
“Thank you.”
“You should brush your hair before they photograph you again.”
June made an angry sound from across the room. “Mom.”
“What? People believe women with tidy hair.”
Celeste sat on the edge of the second bed.
Her mother folded a hotel receipt into smaller and smaller squares. She had done the same thing with church bulletins, grocery lists, and medical bills for as long as Celeste could remember.
“Did you poison him?” she asked.
June stood. “Mom.”
“No,” Celeste said.
Her mother nodded. “Good.”
“That’s all?”
“What else should I ask?”
“Why I worked for him. Why I stayed. Why my bag contained poison.”
“You always choose difficult people.”
“That isn’t a defense.”
“No.” Her mother pressed the folded receipt flat with her thumbnail. “But you don’t poison them. You correct their grammar and make them uncomfortable.”
June laughed once despite herself.
Celeste looked toward the dark hotel window.
The ordinary sound of an ice machine came through the wall.
For five minutes, no one discussed Elias Cade.
Her mother complained about the hotel pillows. June searched for tea. Celeste found a loose thread on her cardigan and wound it around one finger until it cut off circulation.
Then her phone rang.
Silas spoke before she could answer.
“Mr. Elias has collapsed.”
Celeste stood.
June blocked the door. “No.”
“What happened?” Celeste asked.
Silas’s voice remained controlled, but she heard movement around him. “His medication was checked. Food sealed. He became disoriented after using the bathroom, then lost consciousness.”
“Call emergency services.”
“They are coming.”
“Check the bathroom. Toothpaste, mouthwash, soap, anything he touched.”
“We removed all personal products.”
“Water source?”
“Bottled.”
“Ventilation?”
A pause.
“The vent is above the sink.”
Celeste closed her eyes.
The guest bedroom had been cleared. The bathroom vent had not.
“Get everyone out of the room,” she said. “Close the door. Do not touch the vent cover. Tell paramedics possible airborne or surface contamination.”
June stared at her.
“You are not going back,” she said when the call ended.
“He may have been exposed again.”
“The police are there.”
“They don’t know his baseline.”
“You aren’t his nurse.”
“No.”
“Then stay.”
Celeste reached for the door.
June grabbed her wrist. “You were almost arrested because of him.”
“I was almost arrested because someone planted evidence.”
“And you think returning to the house where they did it will improve your chances?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Celeste pulled her wrist free, not gently.
“Because I know what they missed.”
The second exposure was not arsenic.
A fine irritant powder had been packed behind the bathroom vent cover, disturbed when the ventilation fan started. It caused Elias to cough, become disoriented, and collapse, but the hospital later determined that the event was worsened by panic, exhaustion, and his already damaged condition rather than a lethal dose.
It looked like another attempt to kill him.
Celeste believed it was meant to frighten him.
The powder had been placed during the recent corridor renovation.
The plaster dust on Gabriel’s shoe came from the same area.
Gabriel said he had inspected the repair work because Elias was ill and household responsibilities had fallen to him.
The workers confirmed he had visited twice.
They also confirmed Dr. Neri had recommended replacing the ventilation filters after claiming mold might be contributing to Elias’s symptoms.
The renovation company had been hired through a Cade property subsidiary controlled by Gabriel.
Still, none of it proved poisoning.
The arsenic vial in Celeste’s case pointed in the opposite direction.
Elias asked to see her at the hospital.
She refused twice.
The third request came as a handwritten note delivered by Detective Vega.
You were right about the vent.
Nothing else.
Celeste turned the note over. The back was blank.
May you like
She met him the following afternoon in a guarded hospital room.
He looked worse than he had after the first collapse. His damp black hair lay against his forehead, and dark stubble sharpened the hollows in his face. He wore another pair of black silk pajamas because apparently even attempted murder could not persuade him to dress like an ordinary patient.
