Chapter 6 - WHAT THEY PUT IN MY BAG
I didn't open the photograph a second time. I forwarded the message to Ortiz using the number she'd given me, called Elise, and put the phone face down on the kitchen table.
Mom watched me from beside the stove. “What is it?”
“Something that might matter.”
“Does it put you in danger?”
“I don't know.”
She switched off the burner. Her soup could wait. That simple gesture made me feel loved in a way the beautiful flowers Luca kept offering to send never had.
Ortiz called within half an hour. She asked me to preserve the original message and refrain from replying. The photograph might be genuine, altered, or staged; forensic work would determine what could be supported. She did not ask me to identify Sloane from an image on my tiny screen.
“Is he allowed to be in the house?” I asked.
“He attended meetings there before the party. His presence wouldn't necessarily establish involvement in the assault.”
“But what was he doing beside the trolley?”
“That's what we need to ask.”
I swallowed my frustration. She was right, again. A photograph could prove a moment existed without explaining why.
The following day, a nurse from the home rehabilitation service helped me practice moving between my wheelchair and the narrow bathroom doorway. Mom had removed the loose rug, and neighbors had volunteered to bring groceries. Everyone meant well. Some days the help felt wonderful. Other days I wanted to scream at the sight of another person carrying my laundry.
“I used to be able to do this,” I said after struggling with a zipper.
“You will do more than you can do today,” the nurse replied. “But you can be angry about today.”
At lunchtime, Elise arrived looking unusually grim. She brought a letter from an attorney representing Michael. It asserted that I had retained household documents without permission and demanded their return. It implied that failure to comply could expose me to civil claims.
“Are they accusing me of stealing?”
“They're alleging possible unauthorized possession. It's a pressure tactic we can answer through counsel.”
“Because I kept a grocery receipt?”
“Because they're concerned about what records you may have seen. That doesn't mean their claim has merit.”
She prepared a response preserving my rights and asked whether I had taken any documents from private offices. I said no. During eleven months at the mansion, I'd barely entered the library without permission.
Then I remembered something.
“My work tote,” I said. “The black one. Mrs. Carter packed it with my clothes, but I haven't opened it.”
Elise stopped writing. “Where is it?”
“In the closet.”
She asked Mom to bring it to the table. I recognized the scuffed handles and a faded flower pin Dad had given me. But when Elise unzipped the bag and looked inside without removing anything, her expression changed.
“Did you put this here?” she asked.
She turned the opening so I could see a small plastic vial wrapped inside a silk handkerchief I had never owned.
“No.”
Beside it lay a folded card with the words HANNAH—KEEP SAFE written in a slanted script.
My mouth went dry. “I've never seen either thing.”
Elise told us not to touch the objects. She photographed the bag in place, then contacted Ortiz to arrange collection and documentation. Mom moved away from the table as if the little vial might explode.
“Who would put medicine in her bag?” she asked.
“We don't know what it contains,” Elise said. “We're not going to guess.”
But I knew the suggestion the planted objects were meant to create. If a sedative had been put in Luca's champagne, someone could argue I had possessed a matching bottle. My testimony could be recast as a lie or a scheme. The headline practically wrote itself: MAID WHO SAVED MAFIA BOSS LINKED TO DRUG.
I suddenly remembered Vanessa bending toward me as the paramedics pushed me past the head table. She'd been close enough to touch my sleeve. I hadn't carried the tote that night; it had been locked in my staff room.
Someone else had access to that room after I left.
“Mrs. Carter said nobody would enter,” I whispered.
“She said investigators had inspected it,” Elise reminded me. “We need to establish exactly when the bag was packed, who handled it, and whether anyone else had a key.”
I wanted a simple villain. Instead I had a chain of custody with missing links.
The detective arrived with an evidence technician in the afternoon. They documented the bag and took statements from Mom and me. Ortiz listened carefully when I described my staff-room key and the house's master-key system. She didn't imply that I was guilty or innocent based solely on my reaction.
“An object in your belongings doesn't tell us who put it there,” she said. “That's what the investigation is for.”
After she left, I sat by the window, furious enough to shake. Cars crawled through rain on the avenue below. A young couple argued beneath an umbrella, then laughed when the wind turned it inside out. Their ordinary evening seemed like a place I could never reach again.
Mom brought two mugs of tea. “You know what your father would say?”
“Probably something involving a bad joke about luggage.”
“He'd say that a person trying to frighten you often wants you to stop thinking.”
I smiled weakly. “He did say that.”
“Then think. But let the people trained for this do the searching.”
She had learned to deliver both comfort and limits in the same breath.
Later, Luca called through Elise, who asked whether I wanted the conversation. I did. He sounded strained.
“I'm sorry about your bag,” he said.
“Did you know someone could get into my room?”
“Too many people could. It was a failure.”
“Were you surprised to see Sloane in that photograph?”
“Yes.”
“You knew he was in the house before the dinner.”
“I knew he had meetings with Michael. I didn't know he'd been near the service corridor.”
“You keep saying you didn't know.”
“I know.” His voice lowered. “It's becoming the worst sentence I have.”
I stared down at my cast. “You built a business around people being afraid to tell you things.”
He didn't interrupt.
“Maybe they were afraid of your brother too. Maybe Vanessa used that. But you can't just say Michael fooled you. People tried to tell the truth in that house, and they expected punishment.”
“You're right.”
The answer made me more upset. “Stop agreeing and tell me what you're changing.”
So he told me. Independent reporting for household employees. A review of security contracts. Protection for staff who cooperated with investigators. A pause on contracts awarded through Michael's network. Most important, he said, he was willing to give prosecutors access to records even if they revealed unrelated wrongdoing by his own organization.
“That could cost you,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He was silent a moment, then laughed without humor. “You don't make this easy.”
“Neither did your family.”
After the call, Elise looked pleased in spite of herself. “You don't have to comfort a man because he finally acknowledges a problem.”
“I wasn't planning to.”
For the first time in days, I believed my own answer.
After Luca hung up, I asked Elise to stay for another cup of tea. I had never thought of myself as someone who needed to plan boundaries, but every conversation with the Moretti family pulled at old habits. When someone powerful sounded disappointed, I automatically tried to fix it.
“How do I stop doing that?” I asked.
“You may not stop immediately,” Elise said. “You can notice the feeling and wait before acting on it.”
“I keep thinking I should thank him for paying attention.”
“You can appreciate something kind without agreeing to something you don't want. Kindness isn't a contract.”
I considered that while Mom refilled our mugs. My father had taught me to be polite. He hadn't intended politeness to become a trap, but I'd turned it into one when I couldn't afford to lose a paycheck.
“Then I'd like the next communication from his office to go through you,” I told Elise. “Unless I specifically agree to a personal conversation.”
She wrote it down. “That's a clear instruction. I'll send it.”
It felt surprisingly good to make a rule about my own phone.
That evening, Ortiz called with a development she could share. The preliminary lab examination suggested the vial from my bag held the same category of prescription sedative detected in the champagne, but comparative testing and source tracing were still pending. More useful was the handkerchief: its fabric matched a set ordered for Vanessa's private suite, according to a purchase record obtained from the supplier. That did not establish who placed it in my bag.
“Did Vanessa do it?” I asked.
“We haven't reached a conclusion.”
“But she's connected.”
“We're investigating that connection.”
I thanked her and ended the call before I could demand certainty she couldn't honestly offer.
Just before bedtime, Mom sat beside me with her old address book. She'd been unusually quiet all evening.
“There's something I've never told you about the Morettis,” she said.
I turned slowly. “What?”
“Years before you worked at the mansion, when your father was still alive, I helped a small medical charity reconcile its books. The charity received donations from a Moretti family foundation.”
I felt a chill. “Which charity?”
“Rosewood Community Clinic.”
I stared at her. The name on the financial filing had been Rosewood Medical Logistics.
“Was it connected to Victor Sloane?”
“I don't know. I left when I couldn't get an explanation for certain payments. I kept copies of my own correspondence because I was afraid they'd blame me for the missing amounts.”
“Where are they?”
Mom looked toward the old locked desk beside the window.
“In the drawer your father used for tax records.”
A drawer I'd walked past every day.
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The past hadn't been waiting in a mansion vault or a secret room.
It had been sitting three feet from our kitchen table, in a desk I knew by heart.
