Chapter 3 - A Photograph With the Wrong Bucket
The pharmacy smelled of antiseptic, wet umbrellas, and a coffee machine that had burned its last batch. Alessia chose a table beneath a security camera and asked the pharmacist if they could sit there for ten minutes. He said yes. Enzo paid for two bottles of water without consulting her; she pushed one back and bought her own.
"That is not a personal insult," she said when he looked at the bottle. "I need you to understand the difference between offering and deciding."
"I am beginning to," he answered.
The photograph showed the cleaner's left side. A blue cart stood against the wall. There was no clear face, only a sleeve, a bucket and a badge turned toward the reader. Alessia examined it longer than Enzo had expected.
"Our buckets are gray," she said. "Milano Cleaners bought fifty last spring. Bruno argued about the price for a week. That yellow one isn't ours."
"Could somebody have carried a different bucket?"
"Of course. That's why it isn't proof on its own. I want the original recording, the clock settings, and whoever issued the duplicate badge. Not a picture chosen by your security man."
Enzo's mouth twitched. "You've considered investigating?"
"I've considered paying rent. Being accused of a crime makes that harder."
He put the folder away. "I can have Bruno put you back on the schedule."
"You can tell the client the suspension wasn't justified. Bruno can tell me if there's work. You don't get to buy my silence with my own job."
Across the street, Luca remained beside the sedan. Alessia asked Enzo whether the car that had watched her apartment belonged to him. He said it did. He had ordered Luca to watch her after the elevator incident, claiming it was for her safety.
"You don't get to call surveillance protection because you're the man ordering it," she replied. "Stop it. No guards near my home, no questions about my grandmother. If there is an actual threat, tell me what you know and let me decide whom to call."
Enzo took out his phone and canceled the assignment in her hearing. It was a small act, and she did not thank him for stopping something he should never have started.
She called Rosa from the pharmacy. Her neighbor arrived ten minutes later wearing slippers inside leather boots and a coat over her nightdress. Rosa had worked for thirty years in a telephone exchange and had the brisk manner of someone who did not need a dangerous man's permission to finish a sentence.
"This is your famous elevator companion?" Rosa asked.
"Unfortunately."
Rosa looked Enzo up and down. "My neighbor comes home watched, unemployed, and scared. I hope your explanation is better than your manners."
"It isn't yet," Enzo said.
That reply surprised Alessia, although it did not excuse him. She showed Rosa the access log and described the yellow bucket. Rosa immediately asked whether the emergency call had been recorded. Enzo said maintenance had reported static but the call archive was missing eleven minutes. Someone had also switched off the corridor camera for a routine software update, according to Marco.
"Two failures in one night," Rosa said. "Maybe. But don't ask a tired cleaner to prove a system she doesn't control is broken. Preserve what you have and report it."
Alessia insisted they make a formal statement. Enzo's lawyer could handle company records, but she would give her own account independently. Rosa offered to accompany her to a police station the next morning. Enzo agreed to preserve the footage and logs, although Alessia made him repeat that he would not send the folder away for some private cleanup first.
When they left, Luca walked over. He kept his hands visible. "I grabbed you yesterday," he said to Alessia. "I should have asked what happened instead of treating you like an object. I'm sorry."
"Don't do it to the next person," she answered.
In Rosa's little Fiat, Alessia finally let herself lean against the seat. Her phone vibrated with an email from Bruno: her locker at the cleaning depot had been opened by a man who presented a Vieri Tower authorization. Bruno said he hadn't let the man take anything, but a package had disappeared from the break room.
"What's in the package?" Rosa asked.
"I don't know." Alessia scrolled down. Bruno had attached a photograph of the authorization. At the bottom was her name, signed in an elegant flowing hand.
Alessia had never signed an authorization in her life. Her signature was a small, impatient scrawl, learned while writing shopping lists on a bus.
The forged document bore the same date as the elevator failure. Its purpose was printed beneath the signature: REMOVAL OF PERSONAL EFFECTS AFTER EMPLOYEE TERMINATION.
"They planned to fire me before the elevator even stopped," she said.
Rosa pulled over. Alessia called Bruno immediately, asked him to lock the depot, and told him not to destroy the visitor log. Then she dialed the police station she had just found online and asked how to report identity misuse and suspected evidence tampering.
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Before she went inside, Alessia called Nona. Her grandmother answered on the third ring, sounding annoyed rather than frail. "You missed dinner," she said. "And Rosa says somebody has been frightening you. She doesn't get to tell me your business before you do." Alessia leaned against the cool side of Rosa's car and told her about the elevator, the guard and the job. She did not mention every touch or threat; she could hear Nona's breathing and still needed to find the words. "I thought I could keep the bad news away from you," she said. "We live together," Nona replied. "The rent is our problem, not your private punishment. Come home. We will count it together." Alessia promised she would. After hanging up, she looked at the forged signature again. The person who had written her name had expected a frightened woman to hide what happened, particularly from the people she loved. Telling Nona had already spoiled one part of that plan.
For all his money, Enzo hadn't made her safe. A forged line on an ordinary page had just made her situation more dangerous. But it also gave her a question she could answer herself: who had known her locker number before anyone accused her?
