Chapter 5 - THE HOUSEKEEPER’S LEDGER
"Mrs. Gable?" I breathed, staring at the neat, slanted cursive at the bottom of the cream stationery.
"I hereby acknowledge receipt of fifty thousand dollars from Victor Bellini for services rendered regarding the third-floor guest suite," Luca read aloud, his voice like chipped ice.
Marco snatched the hospital bracelet out of the hatbox, holding the tiny loop of plastic against his chest as a tear finally spilled down his cheek. "A boy. July nineteenth. She had a son, Luca. My son."
He spun on Vanessa, his grief turning instantly into fury. "Your father! Your father had her here! That's his prescription bottle, and his name on that receipt! You told me he didn't know where she was!"
"I didn't know!" Vanessa screamed, backing out into the third-floor corridor as Marco advanced on her. "Swear to God, Marco, my father never told me! He told me Clara was in Europe! He told me if I didn't marry Luca tomorrow, he'd ruin us all!"
"Quiet," Luca commanded.
Both of them froze.
Luca looked at me. "Where is Mrs. Gable right now?"
"In the butler’s pantry, sir," I said, my mind racing back over the last seven months. "She oversees the plating for the main course during formal dinners."
Wait.
Two weeks ago, Mrs. Gable had stood in the kitchen watching me repair a torn linen tablecloth. She had remarked on how neat my invisible hemstitch was. Your mother taught you well, Sophie, she had said, handing me the brass key to the third floor. Go air out the cedar closet upstairs before the wedding. And next Friday, I’ll have you steam Miss Bellini’s gown when it arrives from the vault.
She hadn't stumbled onto my sewing skills by accident.
She had known I worked at the Lake Geneva Inn fourteen months ago. It was right there on the resume I had submitted when I applied for this job.
Mrs. Gable had intentionally put me in that third-floor closet to find the coat, and then put me in the foyer tonight to fix Vanessa’s hem.
She had wanted me to blow this wedding apart in front of Luca.
"Mr. Moretti," I said quickly, grabbing his sleeve before I could stop myself. He glanced down at my small hand on his black wool cuff, then up into my eyes. "Mrs. Gable knew I worked at the hotel in Wisconsin. It was on my job application. She assigned me to the third floor two weeks ago, and she was the one who told me to check Miss Bellini’s hem tonight before the guests went into dinner."
Luca’s dark eyes sharpened with sudden understanding. "She set a fuse."
"Why would a woman take fifty thousand dollars from Victor Bellini to hide a secret in November," Marco asked, breathing hard, "and then use a housemaid to expose it the night before the wedding?"
"Let's ask her," Luca said.
He tucked the receipt and the prescription bottle into his breast pocket, leaving the hospital bracelet in Marco’s clenched fist.
We went back down the narrow servants' stairs faster than we had come up. Luca moved with silent, lethal grace, taking two steps at a time. When we reached the ground-floor landing behind the kitchen, the warm scent of roasted garlic and rosemary hit us, accompanied by the clatter of copper pans.
Luca pushed open the swinging door to the butler’s pantry.
Two young catering servers were arranging dessert plates on silver trays. The pantry was otherwise empty.
"Where is Mrs. Gable?" Luca asked the nearest server.
The boy nearly dropped a porcelain saucer. "Mr.—Mr. Moretti! She left about ten minutes ago, sir. Right after you went into the study. She said she had a terrible migraine and went down to her quarters."
Luca didn't wait for the boy to finish. He strode through the back hallway toward the staff wing in the basement level—the same corridor where my own tiny room was located.
Mrs. Gable’s apartment was the first door on the left, just past the laundry room.
The door stood two inches ajar.
Luca pushed it open with the back of his hand, motioning for me to stay behind him in the hallway. "Martha?" he called out.
No answer.
I peered around Luca’s shoulder. The small sitting room was immaculate, smelling faintly of lavender tea and peppermint oil. A half-packed leather overnight bag sat on the sofa, as if she had been in the middle of folding sweaters when someone interrupted her.
On the small oak dining table lay her black leather housekeeping ledger, open to the current month.
Luca stepped inside, his gaze sweeping the empty bedroom and bathroom before he stopped beside the table. "She didn't leave on her own," he said quietly, pointing to the carpet beside the sofa.
A porcelain teacup lay on its side, dark tea still soaking into the beige wool fibers. The spill was still warm.
"Check the back service alley," Luca barked at Marco. "Now!"
Marco bolted down the basement corridor toward the steel exit door. Vanessa stood shivering by the laundry room doorway, refusing to step inside the maid's quarters in her silk gown.
I walked over to the table where the open ledger lay. Beneath the ledger was a small wooden sewing box—the one Mrs. Gable had lent me during my first month here when my own scissors broke.
Pinned to the red velvet pincushion inside the open box was a child’s drawing on a piece of lined notebook paper, folded in half.
My breath caught. I pulled the needle out and unfolded the paper.
It was drawn in blue and yellow crayon—a picture of a yellow house with a green door and a big dog sitting in the yard. Clearly drawn by a child around five or six years old, not a baby.
Wait.
On the back of the crayon drawing, written in Mrs. Gable’s neat cursive, was a message addressed to me:
Sophie—If they figure out what you said upstairs before Mr. Moretti can act, I won't be here when you come down. Look inside the lining of the yellow raincoat in the laundry chute. Do not trust the man who claims to be the father.
My blood turned to ice water.
Do not trust the man who claims to be the father.
At the exact moment I read that line, the heavy steel fire door at the end of the basement corridor slammed shut, and the deadbolt clicked from the outside.
Marco hadn't gone out into the alley to look for Mrs. Gable.
Wait—no. Footsteps echoed on the concrete stairs inside the laundry room next door.
May you like
Before I could scream, the lights in the entire basement wing cut out, plunging us into pitch blackness.
In the dark hallway outside the apartment, Vanessa let out a terrified shriek, followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting the linoleum floor and the metallic click of a pistol hammer being pulled back.
