Chapter 3 - THE DOCTOR WHO NEVER SIGNED
At nine the next morning, I learned there are few things more frightening than discovering you have been watched for years.
Owen and I sat in Nia's kitchen while Detective Alvarez studied the envelope recovered on campus. The windows rattled in a cold wind off Lake Michigan. Somebody upstairs was dragging furniture across the floor. Life went on around us, insulting in its ordinariness.
“Lakefront Meridian contributed to your scholarship fund,” Alvarez said. “That doesn't necessarily mean the sender knew you personally then. The words on the note could be designed to frighten you.”
“But the person knew where I worked,” I said.
“That's different. Your personnel file might have been accessible to several people at the mansion. I'm looking at both possibilities.”
Owen put his elbows on the table. “You're saying we might be part of this because Grace found the folder, or Grace might have been hired so she would find it?”
“I'm saying we don't yet know.”
She looked directly at me. “It's tempting to turn every coincidence into a message. Don't let the person sending threats decide what you believe.”
I liked her for that. She didn't offer the false comfort of certainty.
Matteo called as she was leaving. He had located Dr. Helen Shaw in Evanston and asked whether I would be willing to speak to her with the detective present. I almost said no. My stitches pulled whenever I moved my arm, and every time a car slowed outside Nia's building, I expected Celeste to step out. But I thought of Owen in the scholarship office, saying he had earned his place. I thought of the doctor who'd put his signature on a lie.
“I'll come,” I said.
Dr. Shaw lived in a narrow brick house with an uneven front walk and blue shutters that needed painting. She opened the door herself. Her hair was white, her hands thin and unsteady, but her eyes were extraordinarily sharp.
“I have already told three people I did not diagnose Matteo Romano,” she said before anyone introduced themselves. “Come in if you intend to listen to the fourth.”
Her living room smelled of books and lemon furniture polish. A sleepy terrier studied us from a faded sofa. Framed photographs of medical school classmates lined a mantel beneath a watercolor landscape.
Matteo remained standing while the detective explained the forged report. He had brought an attorney named Julia Park, a compact woman with a careful voice who introduced herself as counsel for the legitimate Romano businesses, not for any criminal enterprise.
Dr. Shaw picked up the copy Alvarez showed her. “That's my signature,” she said. “From a retirement letter I sent in 2020. Someone lifted it.”
“Can you prove where it came from?” Julia asked.
“I kept the original on my computer. And whoever forged this made a clinical mistake.”
She pointed to a section describing Matteo's alleged inability to recognize familiar people. “This would be a significant finding. Yet the report describes no examination, no cognitive assessment, no collateral history. It has a pretty seal and the wrong kind of authority. A medical opinion isn't a court order. Any corporation treating this as proof of total incapacity would be behaving recklessly.”
Matteo exhaled. “Then we can stop it.”
“Perhaps,” Julia answered. “But a board can still misuse internal provisions if a majority cooperates. The immediate danger is not that the paper lawfully replaces you. It's that somebody might move money before a judge stops them.”
Dr. Shaw set down the report. “Why would Adrian Keller do this?”
“Celeste promised him money,” Matteo said.
“Then he is worse than I thought.”
She disappeared into the hall and returned carrying a thick manila envelope. “Last spring I received a letter from a former billing assistant at St. Agatha's Recovery Center. He thought someone was using my name on capacity assessments. I sent him to the medical board. Two weeks later he withdrew his complaint.”
“Do you have his name?” Alvarez asked.
The doctor opened the envelope. “Dominic Greer.”
Matteo stared. “That's my chief financial officer.”
Dr. Shaw looked up sharply. “Then I doubt he was a billing assistant.”
He wasn't. The complainant had used a false description of his work. The signature at the bottom, however, matched letters Matteo had received from Dominic for years. He had asked questions about forged evaluations, obtained information about how a complaint could be investigated, and then disappeared from the process.
“Research,” Julia said. “He was learning which mistakes to avoid.”
Matteo's hands closed into fists. Dominic Greer had managed his legitimate investments since his father died. He was the man who approved the hospital charity budget every December and always remembered what kind of cake Matteo liked on his birthday. That familiarity made him an excellent choice for betrayal.
“You trusted him,” I said quietly.
Matteo gave a humorless smile. “I trusted a lot of people.”
On the drive back, I sat beside him in the back of a dark sedan while Owen rode with Alvarez in another car. I had expected Matteo to order someone to break down Dominic's door. Instead, he called Julia and asked which records could be preserved before the board meeting. The restraint surprised me.
“Do you want to go after him?” I asked.
“Every part of me.”
“What's stopping you?”
“I watched you get hurt because people in my house thought power meant they never had to answer for anything. I don't want to prove them right.”
We drove past gray apartment buildings and a corner church advertising free winter coats. I studied his reflection in the window. He looked exhausted. His authority had always seemed effortless when I watched him from the side of the dining room. Now I saw its weight.
“I lied to you once,” I said.
He turned. “About what?”
“During my job interview. They asked why I left the bakery. I said I wanted better hours. The truth was that my manager kept withholding tips. I was scared if I complained, nobody would hire me.”
“That's not a reason to blame yourself.”
“Maybe not. But I'm tired of making fear sound respectable.”
He watched the traffic through the windshield. “So am I.”
At the mansion, officers were interviewing staff and collecting records. The front gates stood open, a sight that would have seemed impossible a week earlier. Marco met us beside the front steps. He carried a sealed plastic evidence bag containing a small black flash drive.
“Found in the lining of Keller's medical case,” he said. “He claims it contains only patient files. Investigators are taking custody of it.”
Then he gave Matteo another piece of news: Dominic had failed to appear for work and had not answered his phone since the engagement dinner. His office had been emptied overnight, but security footage showed a woman entering it at 5:42 p.m. the previous day.
“Celeste?” Matteo asked.
“No.” Marco hesitated. “Your sister.”
“Isabella?”
Marco nodded.
Matteo stood completely still.
I had seen Isabella Romano only twice. She was thirty-two, an architect who avoided family dinners and spoke to Matteo with the dry affection of someone who knew all his childhood faults. The thought of her helping Celeste made no sense.
“Could she have gone there for another reason?” I asked.
Marco lifted his tablet and showed us a still frame. Isabella entered Dominic's office carrying a narrow white envelope. Five minutes later she left without it. Her face was visible. There was no question who she was.
Julia stepped onto the porch. “We need to ask her, not guess.”
But Isabella wasn't answering her phone either.
I wandered into the servants' sitting room for the first time since my injury. Someone had removed Celeste's framed engagement photographs from the walls. The silence there felt different from the mansion's silence on the night of the dinner. Less fearful. More uncertain.
A housekeeper named Rosa offered me tea, then glanced at the bandage above my neckline.
“You don't have to come back to work,” she said.
“I know.”
“I should have spoken up when I heard Miss Valenti yelling at you.”
“You didn't know what happened.”
“I knew enough to ask. I was frightened.”
I sat beside her. “So was I.”
Rosa wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron. For a moment we didn't need to forgive each other or promise to be braver. We only needed to tell the truth.
Later that afternoon, an investigator searched the housekeeper's office for records explaining my hiring. The personnel agency had recommended me, but somebody from the mansion requested me by name before I'd ever interviewed. The request had been sent from Dominic Greer's account.
Attached was an old scanned document with my father's name.
THOMAS BENNETT — WESTBRIDGE PROPERTY SERVICES, ARCHIVE CLERK.
My throat closed.
My father had died six years earlier after years of repairing heating systems and taking whatever office work he could find. He never once told us he'd worked for Westbridge.
And now the same company was at the center of a plan to destroy Matteo.
May you like
I looked at the date beneath the scanned document. It had been created three months before I was hired.
Somebody had brought me into that mansion on purpose.
