Chapter 5 - THE CELLAR IN LAKE FOREST
I stared at the cream stationery in Luca's hand until the black ink blurred.
"Vanessa hired me?" I whispered. "That doesn't make any sense. She treated me like dirt from the first day I walked through the service entrance."
"Of course she did," Luca said grimly, folding the paper and slipping it into his breast pocket. "If she was nice to you, my mother might have wondered why her new fiancée was taking such an interest in Evelyn Brooks's daughter. By making your life miserable, she kept Mom trying to protect you—until one of you finally slipped up and led them to that cellar key."
I thought back over the last three weeks.
Every time Vanessa had ordered me to clean the upstairs hallways near Teresa's suite, every time she had sent me into the library alone while Teresa was taking her afternoon tea—she hadn't just been bossing me around. She had been throwing Teresa and me into the same room, waiting for the old woman to pass a message to my mother.
And tonight, when Vanessa forced Teresa into those torturous silver heels and threatened to ship her off to Helen Whitfield's care facility on Monday, it had been the ultimate squeeze play. If Teresa thought she was losing her Lake Forest house forever in forty-eight hours, she would be forced to clear out the cellar immediately.
"Come on," Luca said, helping his mother to her feet and wrapping her warm sable coat around her shoulders. "The driver has the SUV at the side portico. We're going to Lake Forest right now."
Forty minutes later, the heavy black Escalade turned through a pair of wrought-iron gates along the quiet, wooded bluffs of Lake Michigan.
Even in the dark, with rain streaking the windows, Teresa's home was breathtaking. It wasn't cold and intimidating like the Lincoln Park mansion; it was an old, warm limestone house with ivy climbing the chimneys and a wrap-around porch that smelled of wet cedar and lake wind.
Before the SUV even came to a complete stop on the gravel drive, I leaned forward in the back seat and gasped.
"Mr. Moretti—look at the side porch."
The storm door leading down to the basement mudroom was swinging open in the wind, its brass latch splintered against the wooden frame.
Luca hit the brakes.
"Stay in the car with my mother," he ordered his driver, reaching into the center console. He didn't pull out a weapon; he pulled out a heavy steel Maglite flashlight and stepped out into the pouring rain.
"Hannah, stay back!" Teresa called out.
I didn't listen. My mother's life and forty-nine years of Teresa's memories were tied up in whatever was down in that cellar, and I wasn't going to let Luca walk into the dark alone. Slipping off the soggy white house slippers and jamming my bare feet back into my sturdy black work shoes, I jumped out of the SUV and ran after him.
"Hannah, I told you to—" Luca started as he reached the splintered door.
"I know how to hold a flashlight, Mr. Moretti, and I'm lighter on the stairs than you are," I whispered breathlessly.
For a split second, despite the danger, the corner of his mouth twitched. He handed me the heavy flashlight, took the lead, and eased down the narrow stone steps into the cellar.
The basement was silent except for the steady drip of rainwater from the broken doorframe. I swept the bright beam across rows of dusty wine racks, old steamer trunks, and gardening tools—until the light landed on the far brick wall behind the furnace.
A heavy iron coal chute door had been pried completely off its hinges with a crowbar.
Inside the recessed brick alcove sat an antique green cast-iron floor safe, its keyhole scratched with fresh silver marks from a lockpick.
Whoever had broken in hadn't been able to pick the old double-bit lever lock, and they had fled before we arrived.
Or at least, they had tried to pick it—until they realized something else.
"Look on the floor," I whispered, pointing the flashlight beam at the concrete in front of the safe.
Lying in the red brick dust was a broken silver heel—the exact mate to the shoes Vanessa had forced Teresa to wear earlier tonight—and beside it lay a half-burned sheet of ledger paper soaked in kerosene.
Wait. If the safe was still locked, where had the ledger paper come from?
Luca knelt beside the green iron box and grasped the brass handle. He pulled.
The heavy safe door swung open without a key.
It had already been unlocked.
Inside the safe, the upper shelf where the 2004 shipping manifests had been stored was completely empty. Only a small tin strongbox remained on the bottom shelf, along with a child's crayon drawing folded in half.
Luca reached in and picked up the crayon drawing.
I shone the light over his shoulder—and my breath caught in my throat.
It was a drawing on the back of a 2004 Mercy Hospital pediatric menu, drawn in purple and yellow wax crayon. It showed two little kids sitting on a dock eating ice cream, and across the bottom, in crooked seven-year-old block letters, someone had written: FOR VANESSA FROM DADDY.
"Vanessa didn't come here tonight to break into a locked safe," Luca said slowly, his voice echoing off the damp stone walls. "She already had the key. She came here to burn the papers before I could get here."
My blood turned to ice.
"Wait," I whispered, grabbing Luca's arm as the pieces crashed together in my head. "Your mother said there was only one key to this safe, and my mother kept it hidden at our house."
"Yes," Luca said, turning to look at me in the glow of the flashlight.
"Then how could Vanessa have unlocked this safe tonight," I whispered, "unless the key was never at my mother's house at all?"
Luca opened the small tin strongbox from the bottom of the safe. Inside rested the heavy two-inch brass key—attached to a stainless-steel key ring embossed with the initials of a hospital employee.
Not Evelyn Brooks.
May you like
The initials on the steel ring read: H. W. — Sunrise Care Residence.
Helen Whitfield. The quiet, polite retirement home director who had sat at the far end of the engagement table tonight and exposed Vanessa in front of the entire room.
