The Woman Using My Name
Chapter 11 - The Woman Using My Name
There is a peculiar terror in hearing your own name used by a stranger.
It feels like someone has entered your house and rearranged the furniture in your body.
I had not been to South Water Street station. I did not know locker 312 existed until Elena’s note led us there. Yet somewhere in Chicago, a woman had opened it with a key, signed my name, and walked away carrying whatever proof Elena died to hide.
Carlo Bellini laughed as though this restored the natural order of the world.
“You see?” he said. “The maid is more ambitious than she looks.”
Luca did not look at him.
He looked at Marco. “Get the clerk.”
“Already on the way.”
“Security footage?”
“Requested.”
Carlo’s laughter faded.
Luca turned back to me.
“You were with Sophie most of yesterday afternoon.”
“Yes.”
“And in the kitchen after six.”
“Yes.”
Vanessa looked at him. “You remember where your maid was but not what your fiancée was doing?”
The question carried poison, but also truth.
Luca looked at her.
“I trusted you to tell me.”
She flinched.
That was when I realized trust can be an accusation after it has been mishandled.
The clerk arrived near two in the morning, a thin young man in a transit uniform and winter coat, looking as though every story he had ever heard about the Morettis was now standing in front of him.
He confirmed the basics.
A woman had come the day before. Brown hair tucked under a cap. Sunglasses. She had the key. She signed Claire Bennett.
“Was she alone?” Luca asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you see her face?”
“Not clearly.”
Marco opened a tablet and displayed station footage.
The image was grainy but clear enough to show a woman at the lockers. She was my height. My build. Wearing a maid’s black coat like mine.
For a terrible moment even I understood why someone might believe it.
Then she turned slightly.
A silver bracelet flashed at her wrist.
Vanessa inhaled.
I looked at her.
“That’s yours,” I said.
She stared at the screen.
The bracelet was delicate, diamond-studded, with a tiny red stone hanging near the clasp. I had seen it on her wrist at breakfast two days earlier.
Vanessa shook her head. “I lost that bracelet last week.”
“Convenient,” Teresa murmured.
“No.” Vanessa’s voice sharpened. “I thought I lost it.”
She looked at her father.
Carlo said nothing.
For the first time all evening, he looked old.
Luca zoomed in on the footage.
The woman’s face remained hidden.
But the left hand was visible.
A scar crossed the back of it.
Teresa frowned.
“I know that hand.”
Everyone turned.
The old woman leaned closer to the screen.
“Magnolia.”
Vanessa whispered, “No.”
“Who is Magnolia?” Luca asked.
“My mother’s maid,” Vanessa said. “She worked for us for twenty years.”
Carlo closed his eyes.
That answer seemed to escape Vanessa before strategy could stop it.
“She left last month,” she said.
Teresa looked at Carlo. “Or was sent away.”
Carlo said, “You have no proof.”
Luca smiled then.
It was not a pleasant smile.
“No,” he said. “But I have a frightened doctor, a forged staff statement, a child’s recording, a planted folder, a sabotaged warrant, and a woman using Claire’s name with Vanessa’s bracelet on her wrist.”
Carlo looked toward the detective.
The detective was no longer writing notes for Carlo’s benefit.
He was writing them for his own.
“Find Magnolia,” Luca said.
Marco left immediately.
Vanessa sank into the chair by my desk.
“She raised me,” she whispered.
No one softened.
I almost did.
That was the trouble with seeing villains up close. Sometimes they had wounds. It did not make them less responsible. It only made the story less convenient.
At three fifteen in the morning, Marco returned with news.
They had found Magnolia Bell in a motel outside Joliet.
She was alive.
She had Elena’s files.
And she had asked for two things before she would speak.
Protection from Carlo Bellini.
And Sophie Moretti.
Luca’s face changed.
“No.”
Marco hesitated.
“She says Elena made her promise the files would only be handed over in front of the child.”
Teresa whispered, “Elena, what did you do?”
Luca looked toward the staircase where his daughter slept.
Then the house phone rang.
A guard answered, listened, and went pale.
He turned toward Luca.
“Boss… Sophie is awake.”
May you like
His voice shook.
“She says a woman is singing outside her window.”
