Chapter 9 - THE OLD GUEST WING
“She can’t make me sign anything,” I said.
“She can hurt Mrs. Ellis,” Noah replied.
Detective Brooks radioed the officers at the house. They confirmed Mrs. Ellis was missing. One officer had seen her enter the old guest wing after Vanessa called to her through the door. When he followed, the passage was empty.
Brooks didn’t ask me to go inside. She asked what I knew about the layout.
Mrs. Ellis had shown me the wing once when I was helping store winter linens. There were two exits: the main hall and a narrow staircase down to the closed kitchen.
I drew them on the back of a receipt. Brooks studied it, then sent officers to both ends. I waited in a car with Noah. Luca stood outside speaking to Marcus.
Twenty minutes passed.
My phone lit up with an unknown number.
“You came,” Vanessa said.
“Where’s Mrs. Ellis?”
“She’s fine. Tell Luca to send the police away.”
I looked through the window at Brooks. She nodded for me to keep talking.
“I want to hear her voice.”
“You’re in no position to demand things.”
“Then I’m hanging up.”
“Claire?” Mrs. Ellis’s voice sounded faint. “I’m all right. Don’t come in.”
The phone changed hands.
“You should have given me the card,” Vanessa said.
“You already had the document. Why did you need the pictures?”
“Because a photograph can ruin everything.”
“You took them yourself?”
Vanessa laughed once. “I thought it would be useful to show Daniel what I’d found. I didn’t know your little camera was watching.”
A sound came through the line: two quick knocks, a pause, then another. Mrs. Ellis used that pattern at the kitchen door when her hands were full.
She was near the kitchen staircase.
I pointed to it on the receipt. Brooks sent a team around the back.
Vanessa heard me move. “Who are you talking to?”
“No one.”
“You’re a terrible liar, Claire.”
A door banged on her end of the call. She swore. Then Mrs. Ellis shouted, “The stairs!”
The line went dead.
Brooks’s officers reached the kitchen in time to find Mrs. Ellis alone. Vanessa had left through a low storage hatch that opened near the rear courtyard. By the time Marcus’s team searched it, she was gone.
Mrs. Ellis was shaken but unhurt. In her hand was a torn piece of paper Vanessa had dropped while fleeing.
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It carried three words and a time:
COURTHOUSE RECORDS. 9 A.M.
