Chapter 12 - What Vanessa Stole
Vanessa’s phone went straight to voicemail.
Again.
Again.
Again.
By the fifth call, I was pacing the courthouse hallway with Noah against my shoulder while Ruiz sent officers to every place she might be.
Her apartment.
Caleb’s place.
Marlene’s house.
The cabin.
Nothing.
Marlene, now discharged into police custody on financial charges, looked at the message and went completely still.
“Vanessa doesn’t have the ledger.”
“How do you know?”
“Because if she did, she would have come to me.”
“Would she?”
Marlene flinched.
I was getting better at finding the places where her confidence cracked.
“What did Vanessa take from Noah?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were in my room the night I brought him home.”
“I was looking for your mother’s letter.”
“Did you touch the baby?”
“No.”
“Did Vanessa?”
“I don’t know.”
Jonah called from the parking garage.
“Clara.”
His tone made me stop moving.
“What?”
“I found her car.”
“Where?”
“Level three.”
“Is she there?”
“No.”
I ran for the elevator.
Ruiz caught up with me.
Vanessa’s car sat crooked across two spaces.
The driver’s door was unlocked.
Her purse was on the passenger seat.
Her phone lay on the floor.
Ruiz stopped me from touching anything.
Jonah pointed to the windshield.
A word had been written in red lipstick across the glass.
LIAR.
My stomach dropped.
“Blood?”
“Lipstick,” Ruiz said. “Probably hers.”
I looked inside.
Her wallet was still there.
Keys gone.
No signs of struggle.
Ruiz found a crumpled receipt in the cup holder.
First Federal.
Yesterday.
“Why was Vanessa at the bank?”
I knew before I finished asking.
Box 214.
The ledger.
“Did she get into the box before us?”
Ruiz shook his head.
“Bank records would show it.”
“Then maybe another box.”
He called the manager.
Ten minutes later, we had an answer.
Vanessa had not accessed a safe deposit box.
She had rented one.
Yesterday afternoon.
Number 619.
Ruiz obtained emergency authority to secure it while a warrant was prepared.
Inside the box was not a ledger.
It was a hospital identification bracelet.
NOAH VOSS.
A memory hit me.
The night I found him, there had been no bracelet on his wrist.
I had assumed it had been removed by clinic staff.
Apparently not.
There was also a small plastic memory card.
The card contained one video.
The timestamp was six days before I found Noah.
Lily lay in a hospital bed.
She looked pale and exhausted, but alive.
Noah slept beside her.
The camera shook, as if whoever recorded it was trying not to be seen.
Then Vanessa’s voice whispered from behind the camera.
“Oh my God.”
I stared at the screen.
“What was she doing there?”
Marlene sat down hard.
“No.”
Ruiz looked at her.
“You knew?”
“I sent her.”
My anger exploded.
“You sent Vanessa to Lily?”
Marlene’s eyes filled.
“I told her to go to St. Catherine’s and bring me an envelope.”
“You knew Lily was there.”
“I had received a message from her.”
“You told us you ran from her.”
“I did. Then she contacted me.”
“What envelope?”
“She said it contained something that could clear Thomas’s name.”
“Why send Vanessa?”
“Because I believed I was being followed.”
“So you sent your daughter into danger.”
Vanessa had always been Marlene’s favorite.
Apparently favorite did not mean protected.
The video continued.
A woman entered Lily’s room.
Short blond hair.
Gray coat.
Helen Baird.
Even grainy video could not hide the registrar’s sharp posture.
She closed the door.
Lily woke.
“You,” Lily said.
Baird smiled.
“You look terrible.”
“Get out.”
“I came for what you stole.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Arthur says you do.”
“Arthur can crawl out of whatever hole he lives in and ask me himself.”
Baird’s smile vanished.
“Where is the ledger?”
Lily turned her face away.
Baird leaned over her.
“You think giving birth makes you brave?”
“It made me busy.”
Even from a hospital bed, Lily had attitude.
My sister.
I almost smiled.
Then Baird grabbed Lily’s wrist.
Noah started crying.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
The video shook.
Vanessa whispered, “I need help.”
She moved toward the door.
Then someone grabbed her.
The image dropped sideways.
A man’s voice said, “You shouldn’t be here.”
Vanessa gasped.
“Caleb?”
The video ended.
Nobody spoke.
Marlene looked like she might be sick.
“Caleb was there.”
I stared at the black screen.
“He knew Lily.”
“He knew more than he told any of us,” Ruiz said.
Jonah punched the wall.
Ruiz snapped, “Don’t.”
“My brother is dead. Lily is dead. Vanessa is missing. I’m running out of polite ways to respond.”
“So am I,” I said.
Ruiz studied the hospital bracelet.
“Why would Vanessa hide this in a bank box?”
“Insurance,” Marlene said.
We looked at her.
“She learned that from me.”
Vanessa had spent her entire life beside a woman who survived by keeping secrets in places other people did not know existed.
Of course she had made a backup.
My phone rang.
Caleb.
Ruiz held out his hand.
I answered on speaker.
“Where is Vanessa?”
Caleb sounded breathless.
“I don’t know.”
“You were at St. Catherine’s when Lily was alive.”
Silence.
“How did you—”
“Where is Vanessa?”
“I swear I don’t have her.”
“Then who does?”
“I think Maddox.”
Ruiz signaled for the tech officer beside him to start tracing.
I said, “Maddox is supposed to be seventy-something and retired.”
“He isn’t retired.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Everybody knows nothing.”
“Clara, listen to me. Vanessa took something from Noah.”
“The bracelet?”
“No.”
My heart stopped.
“What?”
“Lily put something inside the baby carrier.”
“What?”
“I never saw it. Helen did.”
“Then why did Vanessa know?”
“Because Vanessa was still hiding in the room after I pulled her into the supply closet.”
I frowned.
“You helped her?”
“I was trying to keep Baird from seeing her.”
“Why were you there?”
“My uncle sent me.”
“Your uncle?”
Caleb hesitated.
Then he said, “Arthur Maddox.”
The world narrowed.
Caleb Rourke.
Arthur Maddox.
Different last names.
Same family.
Ruiz’s eyes sharpened.
“Caleb, stay on the line.”
Caleb ignored him.
“My mother was Maddox’s daughter. She changed her name after he got investigated years ago.”
“So you worked at Ashford because of him.”
“Yes.”
“You altered my records because of him.”
“Yes.”
Vanessa’s defense of Caleb dissolved in my mind.
He had not accidentally become corrupt.
He had inherited it.
“What did Lily put in the carrier?”
Caleb’s breathing grew rough.
“I think a key.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is Vanessa?”
“I said I don’t know.”
A crash sounded through the phone.
Caleb whispered, “Oh, no.”
Then the line went dead.
Ruiz looked at the trace technician.
“Location?”
The tech turned the screen.
“Old Ashford records annex.”
Mercer stared.
“That building has been closed for ten years.”
Ruiz grabbed his coat.
Caleb’s connection had dropped from a building full of paper records no one was supposed to need anymore.
As we ran toward the cars, I remembered something.
The first night with Noah, I had changed his clothes and found a tiny red mark on the cardboard carrier.
Not a mark.
A number.
May you like
619.
The same number as Vanessa’s safe deposit box.
