Chapter 3: Check Her Bag
The security guard with the kind face came back. His name tag said MARCUS. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.
“Ma’am,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. Would you mind?”
“Not at all,” I said, and I held out my tote bag.
It was an old canvas bag from the Harlow Falls library book sale. Inside were my reading glasses, a pack of tissues, my car keys, a roll of peppermints, and the pie server I’d brought because I didn’t trust a fancy hotel to have one.
Marcus lifted out the pie server. Then he stopped.
Tangled around the handle, glittering under the chandeliers, was a diamond tennis bracelet.
Someone gasped. Someone actually said, “Oh my God,” the way people do on television.
“I knew it,” Celia said. She didn’t sound angry. She sounded satisfied, the way you sound when a recipe comes out right. “I knew the minute I saw her. Marcus, call the police.”
“Mom?”
Emily was coming down the staircase. She was holding her skirt up with one hand, and her face was pale under the makeup. The little gold locket I gave her on her sixteenth birthday was bouncing at her throat.
“Mom, what is happening?”
“Your mother,” Celia said, before I could open my mouth, “has been wandering around my party all night. She was in the kitchen. She was upstairs. And now this.” She lifted the bracelet off the pie server with two fingers, like it was dirty. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know this is hard. But I did warn Preston.”
Preston appeared at Emily’s side and put his arm around her. “Babe. Let’s just let security handle it.”
My daughter looked at me. And I saw it in her face, just for a second. Not belief. Not quite. But the question. Mom, did you?
I have survived a lot of things. My husband dying in a hospice bed with my hand on his chest. A banker in 2009 telling me no woman from a dairy farm had any business buying a hotel. That second, watching my only child wonder if I was a thief, was worse than both.
“Emily,” I said. “Look at me. I didn’t take anything.”
“Then how did it get in your bag?” Celia asked sweetly.
“I’d like to know that too.” I turned to Marcus. “This building has cameras over the coat check, doesn’t it?”
He blinked. “Yes, ma’am. Four of them.”
“Then before anyone calls the police, I’d like someone to look at the footage from the last thirty minutes.”
Celia laughed. “Oh, please. You don’t get to give orders here.”
“Marcus,” I said, not looking at her. “Who’s the general manager on duty tonight?”
“Ms. Ortiz, ma’am. Lena Ortiz.”
“Would you ask her to come down, please? Tell her the woman from the raccoon photo is in the ballroom.”
He stared at me. Then, slowly, he touched his earpiece and spoke into it.
The room went strange and quiet. The string quartet had stopped. A waiter stood frozen with a tray of crab cakes. Emily had stepped out from under Preston’s arm, and she was watching me now, really watching me, with her father’s brown eyes narrowed.
“Mom,” she whispered. “What raccoon photo?”
“Later, honey.”
The service door beside the stage swung open.
Lena Ortiz has worked for me for sixteen years. I hired her as a front desk clerk when she was twenty-nine, a single mother with a baby on her hip and a résumé with a two-year gap in it. Now she ran the most profitable hotel in the group. She came across the ballroom in her black blazer at a pace just short of running, and when she saw me, she stopped dead.
Her eyes went to the bracelet. To Celia. To my wet cardigan sleeves. Back to me.
“Ms. Ortiz,” Celia said, smoothing her gown. “Thank goodness. This woman stole my jewelry, and she’s refusing to leave. I’d like her removed and the police called. And frankly, I’d like to know how your staff let her in.”
Lena didn’t look at her. She was still looking at me.
“Diane,” she said softly. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Lena.”
“Are you hurt? Did someone touch you?” Her voice had an edge now. “Marcus. Did anyone put hands on her?”
“Ms. Ortiz,” Celia said, louder. “I’m the client here. I’m paying eighty thousand dollars for this room.”
Lena finally turned. She looked at Celia Ashford for a long moment, and then she spoke to the whole room, clear as a bell.
“Mrs. Whitaker owns this building.”
