Chương 4
“Questioned.”
“She was arrested,” Grace said.
Evelyn turned on her. “For less than a day.”
“I’m sure the hours were very comfortable.”
Evelyn looked at Mara again. “The necklace was found in Thomas’s apartment after the accident. My necklace. The original. His friend brought it to us.”
“Then you knew my mother hadn’t stolen it.”
“We knew she didn’t have that necklace.”
“But she had this one.”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell the police it might be a copy Thomas gave her?”
Evelyn said nothing.
Grace stood. “This is not helping.”
“No,” Mara said. “It’s helping.”
“The charge was dropped.”
“Was her name cleared?”
“There was no trial.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Leonard opened his portfolio. “Ms. Ortiz, these events are more than two decades old. Memories are incomplete. Records may be unavailable. We should avoid drawing legal conclusions tonight.”
“Tonight,” Mara said. “Because of the gala.”
“Because everyone is upset.”
“You’re not.”
Leonard gave a small, tired smile. “I’m paid not to look like it.”
A phone vibrated on the desk. Grace checked the screen and swore softly.
“What?” Evelyn asked.
“A photograph is circulating.”
“Of what?”
Grace turned the phone around.
The image showed Evelyn in the gallery holding both necklaces, her eyes wide, Mara behind her with her collar torn open. A caption had already been added: VALE FAMILY EMERALD DUPLICATED—STAFF THEFT AT TONIGHT’S GALA?
The photograph had been posted by an anonymous local gossip account twelve minutes earlier.
Evelyn stared at it. “Who took that?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“No, Mother. Not at this moment.”
Grace’s second phone began ringing. She silenced it. “The event is canceled.”
Evelyn looked toward the ballroom. “One photograph does not cancel a dinner.”
“It does when three journalists have called the foundation office and someone has identified Mara by name.”
Mara’s stomach dropped. “How?”
“Your staff badge was visible.”
“Take it down.”
Grace laughed once, without humor. “That is not how this works.”
“You employ a public relations department.”
“And they are currently asking me why a woman claiming to be Thomas’s daughter was hired inside the house.”
Mara looked at Evelyn.
The old woman’s face changed more slowly this time.
“You told someone,” Evelyn said.
“No.”
“You must have.”
“I haven’t told anyone except my roommate that I found the letters. She doesn’t know I work here.”
Grace was already typing. “Pritchard will take you home.”
“I can take the train.”
“That would be unwise.”
“Why?”
“Because there are reporters at the gate.”
The gala ended without beginning. Guests received messages about a family emergency. Caterers packed untouched food into foil pans. The pianist was paid for the evening and carried his music stand out through the service entrance. A board member arrived anyway, argued with Pritchard for five minutes, and left in a black car while speaking into his phone.
Mara waited in the kitchen because she refused to sit in the morning room again.
The cooks gave her a container of salmon and potatoes nobody wanted. Mrs. Keene found the missing uniform button beneath the table and pressed it into Mara’s hand.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Mara told her.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Mrs. Keene adjusted a stack of napkins that did not need adjusting. “Your mother was very pretty.”
Mara stared at her.
The older woman kept her eyes on the napkins.
“You knew her?”
“Everyone who worked here then knew Sofia.”
“Why didn’t you say that before?”
“Because I like my health insurance.”
It was such an ordinary answer that Mara nearly laughed.
Mrs. Keene glanced toward the hall. “She wasn’t a thief.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. Not the way people mean when they ask that. I know she cried in the pantry after the police left. I know Mr. Thomas used to come through the service entrance when his father was home. I know Miss Grace told us we’d be fired if we talked to the press.”
“Did my mother say he gave her the necklace?”
“She said he gave her a promise. I thought she meant the necklace. Maybe she meant you.”
Pritchard appeared in the doorway. “Car’s ready.”
Mrs. Keene picked up the napkins and walked away.
During the drive to Yonkers, Mara’s phone filled with messages from numbers she did not recognize.
A reporter asked whether she had stolen jewelry from Vale House.
Another asked whether Thomas Vale was her biological father.
A third offered to pay for photographs of Sofia.
Mara turned off the phone.
Pritchard drove with both hands high on the wheel. When they reached her apartment building, two men with cameras stood beneath the awning.
“How did they find me?” Mara asked.
“The internet is efficient when it shouldn’t be.”
“I can’t go in there.”
Pritchard watched the men turn toward the car. “You have somewhere else?”
Mara thought of Noelle, who was working a night shift at St. Joseph’s and would come home at seven in the morning to a sidewalk full of strangers.
“No.”
Pritchard backed away from the curb.
He drove her to a business hotel near White Plains that belonged to one of Vale Hospitality’s competitors. Grace would have hated that detail. He paid cash for one room and put it under his wife’s maiden name.
“I’ll reimburse you,” Mara said.
“No, you won’t.”
“I don’t want favors from the Vales.”
“This one is from me.”
“Why?”
He handed her the key card. “Because your collar got torn open in front of my staff, and I stood there.”
Mara looked at him.
He cleared his throat. “Also, I don’t want reporters blocking your building and your neighbors blaming me.”
“That sounds more believable.”
“It should.”
The hotel room had beige walls, sealed windows, and a framed photograph of a sailboat leaning into wind. Mara set the container of salmon in the miniature refrigerator and sat on the bed without taking off her shoes.
She turned on her phone.
Noelle had called nine times.
May you like
Mara called back.
“What the hell?” Noelle answered. Hospital noise moved behind her—wheels, voices, a distant announcement. “There are people outside our building. Mrs. Patel thinks you murdered a duke.”
