Chapter 6 - The Woman in the Interview Room
Tessa had been inside police stations before, but only to collect a lost wallet and once to report a neighbor who was being threatened. This time the detective asked her to surrender the contents of her purse. He was courteous, which somehow made the fluorescent room feel worse.
Detective Lena Rivera placed a copy of the authorization on the table. It purported to allow Tessa to collect jewelry from Beatrice and arrange transfers from a custodial account. The signature at the bottom looked like Beatrice's, but the date was from two weeks earlier. Tessa had been employed at the estate then, though she had not yet entered room 104.
"Did you sign this?" Rivera asked.
"No. I was cleaning the west wing that afternoon."
"Do you have anything that puts you there?"
"An assignment sheet, maybe. Ask the staff. And I kept bus tickets because my employer reimburses transit after late shifts." She realized how small that sounded beside a signed document. "I also have my notebook."
She put it on the table. It held meal notes, bus times, and the sentence she had written about the missing photograph. Rivera turned the pages without smiling.
"You documented the bracelet handoff on the fifth day," she observed.
"Yes. I didn't know I'd have to prove it to a detective."
"Sometimes the things we write down for ordinary reasons matter most."
Rivera did not promise to clear her. She explained that the police would compare the documents, request bank records, and interview other witnesses. Tessa appreciated the refusal to pretend the problem was already solved.
When she left the interview room, Damian was waiting beside a vending machine. He stood as she approached. She looked at the machine's row of brightly colored candy bars.
"Did you buy the whole building to get in here?"
"No. Naomi explained where I could wait."
"Progress."
He handed her a bottle of water. She accepted it, because accepting water was not signing away her future. They sat several feet apart on a molded-plastic bench while the station's afternoon traffic passed around them.
"I can hire you the best lawyer in the state," he said.
"Naomi's helping me find independent representation. You can pay the estate's part of the investigation. I want my own lawyer, who answers to me."
"All right."
She looked at him. "You really aren't used to hearing no, are you?"
"I'm starting to recognize the sound."
The laugh that escaped her was small and exhausted. Then she saw a father lifting a sleeping child from a chair across the room and thought of Hannah. Her throat closed.
"I sat through three years of appointments with my sister," she said. "Everybody had a solution, and most of them came with a bill. I didn't keep her alive. I couldn't. The debt stayed anyway. I don't have it in me to be somebody's inspirational maid, Damian."
"You shouldn't have to be."
"Then don't turn me into one."
He nodded. She could tell he was trying to say something larger, perhaps something about how he had misjudged her. She was relieved when he didn't.
Alicia called while Tessa was on the bench. She explained the difference between being interviewed and being charged, and arranged a follow-up meeting to discuss employment records and debt collection. Tessa wrote down every instruction, including what not to send from her work email. She did not want the detective, Damian, or anybody else to become the sole owner of her account of events. When she finished, Damian asked if she wanted a ride home. "Not today," she said. "I'm meeting Nia first."
Back at the estate, Paul discovered why the hallway recording had supposedly failed. The recorder had not malfunctioned. Someone had used an administrator account to delete a six-minute segment. A backup server retained access logs, though not the video itself. The login belonged to Eleanor Pike; the command had originated from Julian's office computer.
Naomi told Damian that the logs would support an investigation, not replace the footage. They needed the bracelet, the original authorization, and the bank trail. Damian opened an old file cabinet and found a printed estate policy: valuables transferred at the nursing station required two signatures and an inventory receipt. Eleanor had waived the procedure repeatedly. He had signed the renewal that allowed her to run the east wing without supervision.
"I've been paying to look away," he said.
"You've been paying for an arrangement that protected you from unpleasant information," Naomi replied. "There's a difference, but neither protects your mother."
She also informed him that Julian's payment records crossed into Costa Maritime, Damian's shipping company. Some were ordinary consulting fees. Others had no supporting contracts. Damian knew enough to suspect the investigation would expose his own wrongdoing. He asked what cooperation would require.
"All relevant records, not just the ones that make Julian look bad," Naomi said. "And you need separate criminal counsel. I won't promise you an easy ending."
"I didn't ask for one."
When Tessa returned to her apartment that evening, the landlord had slipped a notice under her door. The lender had contacted him, claiming that collectors might seek access to the unit. The notice was legally questionable, and Tessa photographed it for her lawyer. Then she heard footsteps outside and waited without moving until they passed.
Her phone rang. Nia was crying.
"They fired me," she said. "They said I released confidential records."
"Who signed the letter?"
"Julian. Eleanor countersigned."
Tessa pictured the missing photograph, the unsigned inventory receipt, the ledger that used her name, and the woman who had risked her job to show her the truth. She took out Hannah's old address book. A legal aid attorney who had helped them dispute hospital charges had once written a number in the back.
May you like
"Come over," she told Nia. "We'll call someone who doesn't work for the Costas. We'll make separate complaints, and we'll put everything in writing."
Outside the window, a car slowed along the street. Tessa watched it pass, then reached for a second pen. Fear was not a reason to stop keeping records.
