They Framed the Nanny to Steal His Empire—Then I Came Back With His Ledger

"Tell me that bear has cloud storage," Mara said as we backed out of the ruined driveway.

"Better. It records to a 256-gigabyte micro-SD card sewn inside the lining, and it synced automatically to an old iPad Vianey keeps under her mattress whenever it detected motion in the guest corridor—which connects directly to my old bedroom."

"Where is the bear now?"

"Sitting on the rocking chair in my old quarters on the third floor," I said, looking back at the darkened mansion. "Where my suitcase was sitting until five-thirty this afternoon."

"Elena, we can't go back inside that house tonight," Mara warned, reading my expression immediately. "The sergeant left a patrol car at the end of the cul-de-sac, and Adrian’s goon in the grey raincoat is probably still on the grounds."

"We don't need to go through the front door," I said. "And we aren't going back tonight. Who else has legal authority to enter the Vance estate right now without Adrian being able to call the police?"

Mara thought for three seconds. "Only Ricardo. And he's under concussion protocol and CPS observation at Swedish Hospital until at least tomorrow morning."

"Not just Ricardo," I corrected her. "Martha."

"Who is Martha?"

"Martha Kowalski. She’s been the head housekeeper for the Vance family since Ricardo and Adrian were in grade school. Last Tuesday, Celeste fired her on the spot after accusing her of scratching a dining room table—because Martha overheard Adrian arguing on the phone in Polish with a private aviation broker."

I pulled up Martha’s number on my phone. The sixty-five-year-old woman answered on the first ring. She was wide awake.

"Elena, child, is it true?" Martha’s heavy voice came through the speaker. "My nephew lives two streets over from Madison Park. He saw the police cars and the ambulance at Mr. Ricardo's house!"

"Martha, Vianey and Ricardo are safe at the hospital right now," I said quickly. "Listen to me. Did you ever turn in your service entrance transponder for the delivery tunnel behind the greenhouse?"

A pause. "Miss Celeste demanded my brass keys. She never knew about the greenhouse keypad or the laundry chute access."

"Do you still want to clear your name—and protect Clara’s little girl?"

"I will meet you at the botanical garden parking lot in fifteen minutes," Martha said fiercely. "And I am bringing my late husband's crowbar."

Thirty minutes later, while the single police cruiser sat idling two hundred yards away at the front street entrance, Martha led me through the overgrown rhododendron trail bordering the neighboring arboretum.

She punched a six-digit code into a rusted keypad hidden behind an ivy-covered brick wall. The subterranean delivery door—built during Prohibition for coal deliveries—clicked open without a sound.

"Stay by the stairs, Martha," I whispered, slipping off my wet boots so my socks wouldn't make a sound on the basement concrete. "If anyone comes down, hit the panic button on Mara’s phone."

I crept up the narrow back service stairwell all the way to the third floor. The house was eerily silent, smelling of wet wool and the heavy French perfume Celeste wore like armor.

I eased open the door to my former room. The closet had been stripped bare, the hangers thrown onto the floor.

In the corner, on the white wooden rocking chair, sat Barnaby—the threadbare plush bear Vianey had given me on my birthday so I "wouldn't be lonely at night."

I crossed the room in three strides, snatched the bear, and reached beneath my mattress for the synced iPad.

Just as my fingers closed around the cold aluminum tablet, the floorboards creaked in the hallway outside.