Chương 5
“That’s convenient.”
“Yes.”
“Do they believe him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always sound like you know.”
“Useful illusion.”
Anna rubbed her eyes.
“What happens now?”
“They test both plates.”
“Both?”
“The one Daniel removed was still in the kitchen.”
Anna thought of the video.
“Was it contaminated?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“If it wasn’t, then—”
“Then Daniel switched a safe plate for a poisoned one.”
“And if it was?”
“Then someone may have poisoned the first plate and he may actually have replaced it.”
Anna sat in silence.
The certainty she had carried into Vincent’s wrist dissolved.
“What if I got it wrong?”
“You stopped me from eating a lethal dose.”
“That doesn’t mean I was right about him.”
“No.”
She heard no accusation in the answer.
That somehow made it harder.
“I told the police he did it.”
“You told them what you saw.”
“I said he looked guilty.”
“That was opinion.”
“Great.”
Vincent was quiet.
Then: “Go to sleep.”
Anna looked at the microwave clock.
“It’s three-thirty.”
“Yes.”
“You’re awake.”
“I have a different schedule.”
“Because people poison your dinner often?”
“No.”
“Good.”
There was another pause.
Vincent said, “Anna.”
“What?”
“Whatever Daniel did or didn’t do, you are not responsible for the truth changing as more facts appear.”
She did not answer.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
The next morning, Anna woke at eleven to fourteen missed calls.
Three were from Craig.
Two from unknown numbers.
One from Detective Torres.
Eight were from reporters.
She did not know how they had found her number.
Leah did.
“Your name is online.”
Anna stood in the kitchen wearing an old college T-shirt and one sock.
“What?”
Leah turned her laptop around.
A local news site had a photograph taken outside the restaurant.
Anna was in the background.
The headline called her “the waitress who saved mogul Vincent Moretti from suspected poisoning.”
Another site had identified her by name.
A third had found an old photograph from her community college graduation.
Anna stared at herself on the screen.
She was twenty-two in that picture, smiling too widely because her mother had been behind the camera yelling at her to show teeth.
“Where did they get that?”
“Facebook.”
“I haven’t used Facebook in years.”
“The internet remembers even when you don’t.”
Anna sat.
Comments beneath the article had already divided into camps.
Hero.
Liar.
Publicity seeker.
Moretti plant.
Mob mistress.
Whistleblower.
Idiot.
One person had written that Anna “obviously fabricated the whole thing for attention.”
Another said Vincent had staged the poisoning because business was bad.
His businesses, apparently, were not bad.
That did not prevent anyone from saying it.
Anna closed the laptop.
“I need coffee.”
Leah stared at her.
“You just read that strangers think you’re sleeping with an alleged crime boss.”
“Logistics executive.”
“Oh, good. The coffee will fix it.”
Anna filled the machine.
Her hands were steady now.
That felt unfair.
At noon, Detective Torres arrived.
She declined coffee.
Leah did not offer again.
Torres sat at the kitchen table and placed a small recorder between them.
“The first plate also contained the drug.”
Anna blinked.
“So Daniel was telling the truth?”
“Not necessarily.”
“But he replaced a poisoned plate with another poisoned plate?”
“Yes.”
“Why would anybody do that?”
“That is one of several questions.”
Anna leaned back.
Torres explained what they knew.
The medication had been introduced after the food left the main cooking line.
Both plates carried nearly identical concentrations.
The original plate had been found in a warming cabinet where Daniel claimed he placed it after noticing someone near it.
No usable prints had been recovered beyond kitchen staff.
Security footage from the kitchen hallway had a four-minute gap caused by a system restart.
“Coincidence?” Anna asked.
Torres’s expression said she disliked the word.
“We’re determining whether it was scheduled maintenance, manipulation, or failure.”
“Daniel is head of security. Could he shut cameras down?”
“For Moretti’s company systems, maybe. This restaurant uses its own vendor.”
“So maybe not.”
“Maybe is doing a lot of work today.”
Anna rubbed her forehead.
Torres looked toward Leah.
“Did you send the video to anyone?”
“No,” Leah said.
“Upload it?”
“No.”
“Cloud backup?”
Leah glanced at Anna.
“I mean, probably. My phone backs up automatically.”
Torres nodded.
“That’s fine. Don’t delete anything.”
Anna asked, “Is Daniel free?”
“For the moment.”
Her stomach tightened.
“Does he know where I live?”
Torres did not answer immediately.
“We have no evidence he’s threatened you.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“No, we don’t know whether he has your address.”
Anna laughed without humor.
“Vincent does.”
Torres’s eyes sharpened.
Anna explained.
When she finished, Torres sighed.
“Mr. Moretti has a flexible relationship with boundaries.”
“That’s one way to say it.”
“If anyone from his organization contacts you about your statement, evidence, or what you should tell us, call me.”
“He hasn’t.”
“Good.”
“He just told me to sleep.”
Leah looked offended.
“You left that part out.”
Anna ignored her.
Torres gathered her notes.
At the door, she turned.
“There’s something else. Your manager says Daniel had been in the kitchen earlier in the evening.”
Anna frowned.
“When?”
“About six-thirty.”
“I started at seven.”
“He says Daniel was inspecting the private room service route.”
“For Vincent?”
“That’s Daniel’s explanation.”
“So Craig knew him.”
“Yes.”
Anna remembered Craig beneath the awning asking for her locker key.
Her stomach changed.
“He told me he didn’t know who Daniel was.”
Torres stopped.
“When?”
“Last night. When I told him a stranger had entered the kitchen, he said he had no idea.”
Torres took out her notebook again.
“Exact words?”
Anna tried to reconstruct them.
That was harder than she expected.
She remembered Craig’s face, the towel over his shoulder, the printer spitting tickets.
Words were less reliable.
“He said something like, ‘I don’t know every suit who walks through here.’”
“Something like.”
“Yes.”
Torres wrote.
“Don’t improve it for me.”
May you like
“I’m not.”
“I know. I’m reminding you because people do without realizing.”
