Chapter 3 - The Kitchen Window
By morning, the story had spread through Savannah. One clip showed Gabriel kneeling beside Alma. Another cut away the collar and made it look as if he were threatening a woman at a Christmas party. The captions were uglier than the images: VIOLENT OWNER DISRUPTS FAMILY EVENT. POLICE CALLED TO LUXURY ESTATE.
Gabriel looked at the clips once and put down his phone.
“Don't fight an edited video with another edited video,” Camille told him. “We have witnesses, the collar, and the hospital record. Let those speak.”
“I want to tell people what they did.”
“You will. After we make sure Renee is safe.”
That morning, Gabriel stopped at Micah's bedroom to collect his son's blanket. The child had arranged seven toy cars in a careful row beneath the window. On the dresser sat a Christmas card from Alma, signed in her looping handwriting: TO MY LITTLE SUNSHINE, NEVER LET SOMEBODY MAKE YOU SMALL. Gabriel slipped the card into his pocket. He had trusted the family household because Alma lived there and because Julian said she was happy. A lovely building, he realized, could hide an ugly life from everyone who chose not to look.
His assistant called about a store opening and asked whether he should postpone it. Gabriel told him to let the regional managers decide, then sent every branch a reminder that no employee should be asked to discuss his family's crisis with customers. He refused to turn a missing sister and an injured mother into a corporate publicity campaign.
Camille obtained a copy of the letter attached to the chair from a guest who had photographed it. The document purported to authorize placement of Renee's unborn child with Elise and Julian if Renee became unable to parent. It included a handwritten signature, but not the signature Gabriel knew from Renee's birthday cards and years of family receipts.
“This doesn't decide anything merely because it's printed on expensive paper,” Camille said. “We're preserving it and investigating how it was made.”
At the hospital, Alma described the kitchen window. The service kitchen stood at the rear of the estate, separated from the main building by a narrow paved passage. On the fourth day she'd been confined, Renee had appeared outside that window long enough to slide the bracelet through a gap in the screen.
“She said she couldn't run fast,” Alma remembered. “Said they'd taken her shoes.”
“Who?”
“I didn't see.”
She closed her eyes. “I tried to get to her. The chain was too short.”
Gabriel let the silence sit. He wanted to promise to find Renee by sunset. He didn't know if he could.
Lena obtained surveillance from a neighbor whose camera faced the estate's rear gate. At 2:06 a.m., a dark catering van had left the property. The company name on its door was obscured with silver tape. A woman sat in the passenger seat, bent forward, but the image couldn't establish her identity.
At 2:27 the same van stopped at a gas station fourteen miles away. Its driver bought water and a disposable phone. The cashier remembered him because he'd complained loudly that the station wouldn't accept his company credit card.
Lena asked the public for information without releasing Renee's medical details. She also requested relevant records through the proper channels. Gabriel did not storm the station or chase the driver. His son needed him steady more than he needed him furious.
The next useful piece of evidence came from Andre, the waiter who had fetched a blanket for Alma.
He arrived at Camille's office still wearing his black catering trousers.
“I should have called sooner,” he said.
“Tell us what you saw,” Camille replied.
Andre said Elise had fired three longtime staff members after they questioned the treatment of Alma. She made servers use a side corridor instead of the main kitchen. She had told one white guest that Alma was “the help who didn't know her place,” then laughed when corrected.
“Did she say those exact words?” Camille asked.
Andre nodded. “I wrote them down that night because I couldn't believe it.”
He produced a dated note on his phone. Gabriel thanked him for making a record, but did not ask him to embellish what he'd witnessed.
Andre also remembered a pregnant woman stumbling through the service corridor on the night Renee disappeared. He believed it was Renee, but the woman had kept her face turned away.
“Did you see anyone with her?”
“A man in a gray work jacket. He wore a company badge upside down.”
“Which company?”
“Northstar Relocation.”
Gabriel knew the name. It managed emergency moves for Home for the Holidays. His mother had approved it only after Julian assured her the company was legitimate.
Camille searched the gala contracts. Northstar had received $486,000 in three installments for temporary housing placements. Its listed business address was an empty storefront between a pawnshop and a shuttered laundromat.
“That money was for families who lost their homes,” Gabriel said.
“Yes. We need to find where it went.”
That afternoon, Thomas arrived. He drove seven hours without stopping except for gas. Gabriel met him outside the hospital and told him every fact they could verify.
Thomas pressed both palms against his eyes.
“She said Julian was doing something wrong. I told her to let the accountants handle it.”
“Neither of us saw this coming.”
“She saw it.”
Gabriel had no answer.
Together they visited the kitchen window with investigators' permission after evidence was documented. Beneath the sill, partly hidden in the ivy, they found a small red mitten. Renee had bought a pair for Micah, although the boy insisted he was too old for mittens.
Thomas picked it up by its edge and showed Lena.
“This is hers. She had it in her coat pocket.”
Inside the mitten was a tiny strip of paper, rolled tight.
Gabriel unfolded it without touching the writing.
In Renee's neat handwriting were three words and a number.
FIND MRS. HOLLOWAY. 19.
Thomas stared.
“Holloway was the first family Renee helped when the apartments closed.”
“Apartment nineteen?” Gabriel asked.
“No. Room nineteen at the winter motel.”
May you like
The winter motel had burned down eleven months ago.
And its owner had been declared missing ever since.
