Chương 5
She sat down.
She had not realized she was standing.
“Hospital checked everything?”
“Everything.”
“Good.”
“He has a bruise on his shoulder.”
Her chest tightened.
“From what?”
“Harness pressure, probably when you stopped him.”
“I hurt him.”
“You prevented him from reaching stairs.”
“I still—”
“Elena.”
She stopped.
“He’s fine,” Marcus said.
Then, after a moment, “I’m not.”
She waited.
“I keep replaying it.”
“Don’t.”
“I can’t stop.”
“So do something else.”
“Like what?”
“Change a diaper.”
He was quiet.
Then he laughed.
A real laugh this time.
It lasted one second.
“Already did.”
“Badly?”
“Offensively.”
“That sounds right.”
His voice changed.
“Vivian was released.”
Elena sat straighter.
“Released?”
“She hasn’t been charged.”
“How?”
“The detectives are investigating.”
“She said she wanted him dead.”
“She says the statement was metaphorical.”
Elena stared at the wall.
“Metaphorical.”
“That she was talking about his status as heir.”
“While the bassinet rolled toward stairs.”
“I know.”
“Does the detective know?”
“Yes.”
“Then why is she out?”
“Because this isn’t television.”
Elena hated him for saying it.
Mostly because he was right.
“What about the video?”
“Partial.”
“What does that mean?”
“The system saved fourteen seconds. It begins just before she releases the brake.”
“That’s good.”
“There’s a gap in the audio.”
“Where?”
“Before the sentence.”
“How long?”
“About three seconds.”
Elena felt her stomach sink.
“Why?”
“Technical people are examining it.”
“And Vivian?”
“Her lawyer says the gap makes the clip unreliable.”
“Of course he does.”
“There’s something else.”
Elena waited.
“The monitor wasn’t paired only to my account.”
“Whose?”
“We don’t know yet.”
The next morning Elena went to work.
Sofia called her three kinds of fool before breakfast.
Marcus had told her she could stay home with pay.
Detective Kim had told her not to enter the gallery unless necessary.
Her knee hurt.
She went anyway.
Crowe House without guests looked older.
The chandeliers were off.
Gray daylight lay across the marble.
Staff members spoke quietly in corners and stopped when Elena approached.
In the kitchen, the pastry chef asked whether Noah was okay.
The gardener asked whether Vivian had really been arrested.
A young server who had worked the dinner asked Elena if the family was going to fire everybody.
“Nobody knows anything yet,” Elena said.
It became her sentence of the day.
Nobody knows anything yet.
At eleven, Marcus arrived carrying Noah in a car seat.
Elena stared at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Coming home.”
“With him?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Marcus blinked.
“No?”
“You bring him back here after last night?”
“Security has doubled.”
“That woman knows this house better than security does.”
“She’s not permitted on the property.”
“Doors have stopped very few rich relatives in history.”
A houseman passing with towels abruptly changed direction.
Marcus lowered his voice.
“I’m not moving out of my own home.”
Elena looked at Noah.
He was sleeping.
“You don’t have to prove anything today.”
Marcus’s jaw tightened.
“I’m not proving anything.”
“Then why are you here?”
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
She waited.
Finally he said, “Because if I leave, she wins.”
Elena almost told him how childish that sounded.
Then she saw his face.
Not childish.
Wounded.
Crowe House had belonged to his mother before she married Richard Crowe. Marcus had spent his early childhood there, left after his mother died, returned years later when Richard’s health failed. His relationship with the house was complicated enough that Elena had stopped asking questions about it.
“Fine,” she said.
Marcus frowned.
“That’s it?”
“No. I’m saving my energy because your son has a diaper that smells like a federal crime.”
Marcus looked down.
Noah woke up and smiled.
The house did not become safe again because they returned to routine.
That illusion lasted less than a day.
At four thirty, Detective Kim arrived with another detective and asked to speak with Elena, Marcus, the nanny, and the security director separately.
The monitor had been purchased six months earlier.
Not by Marcus.
The serial number did not match the monitor from Noah’s nursery.
This one was identical but separate.
“Someone planted it?” Marcus asked.
Kim sat in his study, a legal pad on her knee.
“That’s one possibility.”
“Why?”
“That’s what we’re trying to establish.”
Elena leaned against a bookcase because her knee hurt too much to stand straight.
“Who bought it?”
“Cash purchase. Electronics store in Arlington.”
“Camera footage?”
“Requested.”
Marcus folded his arms.
“Vivian.”
Kim looked at him.
“You don’t know that.”
“She arranged Noah’s move upstairs. She knew where the bassinet would be. She knew the trust terms.”
Kim did not react.
Marcus continued.
“She planned the whole thing.”
“Then why plant a camera that could record her?”
The room went quiet.
That question had been waiting for them.
Elena pushed away from the shelf.
“Maybe it wasn’t hers.”
Marcus looked at her.
Kim did too.
Elena thought about the placement.
Clipped to Noah’s blanket.
Red light visible.
A device that had frightened Vivian the instant she noticed it.
“What if somebody expected something to happen?” Elena said.
Marcus’s expression hardened.
“To my son?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who expects someone to try to kill a baby and doesn’t tell me?”
Elena did not answer.
Kim did.
“Someone who wasn’t sure.”
Marcus laughed without humor.
“That makes it better.”
“No,” Kim said. “It makes it different.”
The electronics-store footage arrived the next day.
The buyer wore a baseball cap and sunglasses.
Male.
Medium height.
Cash.
The image quality was poor.
But one detail was clear.
A tattoo on the inside of his right wrist.
A dark vertical line crossed by two shorter ones.
Marcus’s security director recognized it.
His name was Owen Bell.
He worked for Crowe Mercer.
More specifically, he worked for Vivian.
Owen was her executive assistant.
Police found him in a hotel near Dulles Airport.
He had a ticket to Toronto for the following morning.
That looked bad.
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It looked worse when detectives found twenty-eight thousand dollars in cash inside his suitcase.
But Owen did not confess.
