Chapter 2 - The Ghost in the Service Wing
The servants' wing at Blackwood Hall was separated from the family apartments by two reinforced fire doors and a flight of narrow, spiral stairs constructed from cast iron. It smelled of bleached linen, dry starch, and the faint, bitter tang of floor wax that had accumulated over sixty years.
I carried Grace against my shoulder. She had discovered the mother-of-pearl buttons on my waistcoat and was attempting to pry them loose with her front teeth.
Hannah walked three paces ahead of me, her spine stiff, her hands clutching her white apron as if it were the only thing keeping her from flying apart into dust. Behind us, Vincent strode like a gray shadow. Vincent was seventy-two, his back slightly curved from a lifetime of loading shotguns and pouring scotch for three generations of Caruso men. His right hand remained tucked inside the left breast of his coat, resting on the grip of the Walther PPK he had carried since the Berlin airlift.
"Room fourteen," Hannah whispered, stopping before a plain pine door at the end of the third-floor corridor.
The room was eight feet by ten feet. A single casement window looked out over the gravel service yard and the high brick wall that separated the estate from the coastal highway. There was an iron cot with a thin horsehair mattress, a wardrobe with one missing brass pull, and a small pine table.
On the floor, nestled between the wardrobe and the wall where the draft from the window couldn't reach, was an inverted fruit crate padded with three folded bath towels from the guest suite. Inside the crate lay a small plush bear missing an ear, a rubber teething ring, and an empty baby bottle with a cracked plastic rim.
The entire space smelled of infant formula and lavender soap.
"She stayed here?" I asked. My voice was too loud for the small room; it rebounded off the bare plaster like a shot. "In a crate?"
Hannah spun around, her eyes flaring with that sudden, feral fury only cornered animals possess. "I had nowhere else, Mr. Caruso! The girl who watched her in the village fell down the stairs two weeks ago. Broke her hip. The state wanted seven hundred dollars a month for the municipal creche in Bayonne. Where was I supposed to get seven hundred dollars? On thirty-five dollars a day?"
Vincent cleared his throat softly behind me. "Mr. Dante. The domestic wage scales were set by the elder Mr. Caruso in nineteen-ninety-four. They have not been adjusted—"
"Quiet, Vincent," I said.
I knelt. It was an awkward motion; my knee joints cracked, and the child in my arms let out a squeak of protest as her center of gravity shifted. I reached into the wooden crate and picked up the plush bear. It was cheap, synthetic fur, matted from saliva and washings. Tucked beneath its arm was a small, green plastic toy soldier—the kind boys bought in bags of fifty at five-and-dime stores.
Julian had an entire regiment of those soldiers when he was nine. He used to bury them in the flowerbeds along the driveway and dig them up with a silver soup spoon, pretending they were survivors of a lost campaign.
"She crawled out while you were where?" I asked, looking up at Hannah.
"I had to carry the silver tureens down to the kitchen for the Vance meeting," she whispered, her anger suddenly deflating into sheer exhaustion. She leaned her shoulder against the doorframe, her eyes closing. "I wedged the chair under the knob. I swear to God I wedged it. But she’s... she’s stronger than she looks. She pulled the basket over, knocked the latch loose... she doesn't stop moving, Mr. Caruso. Just like him. Evan used to pace the kitchen until three in the morning. He couldn't sit still in a dark room."
"Because he was waiting for the glass to break," I said softly.
Grace reached down and touched my ear. Her fingers were damp and smelled slightly of vanilla wafer.
"Vincent," I said, standing up.
"Yes, Mr. Dante?"
"Call Dr. Mercer. Have him bring the mobile pediatric unit from St. Jude’s. I want a full metabolic panel, bone density scans, toxicology, and an immediate buccal swab for an expedited PCR sequence against my DNA profile."
Hannah gasped. "You think I'm lying? You think I stole that medal?"
"I don't think anything, Miss Reed," I said, looking her up and down. She was thin—too thin. The collar of her dress hung loose around her clavicles, and the hollows below her cheekbones were dark with the kind of chronic fatigue that sleep cannot touch. "In my world, men hire women to walk into rooms with babies and medals every six months. If this child is Julian’s, she is the sole legal heiress to forty percent of the Caruso maritime consortium. That makes her a target for every family between Boston and Miami. It also makes her the only thing that matters in this house."
I turned toward the door, shifting Grace higher on my arm. She let out a small, satisfied burp against my collar.
"Where are you taking her?" Hannah stepped forward, her hands reaching out instinctively, fingers hooked like talons. "You can't take her! She doesn't know you!"
"She's sleeping in the master suite," I said without looking back. "Vincent, bring Miss Reed’s belongings to the adjoining dressing room. The nursery on the second floor will be unpacked and aired out by midnight."
"Mr. Dante," Vincent murmured, stepping into my path with the quiet deference of a man who had known me since I was seven years old. "The master suite has not been opened since your father died. And the staff... they will talk. A maid moving into the family wing will draw attention from the security detail."
"Let them talk," I said, looking down the long, dim corridor of the servants' quarters. "And Vincent?"
"Sir?"
May you like
"Double the watch on the north gate. No one leaves the grounds. Not the gardeners, not the cooks, not Victor Vance’s associates. If a pigeon flies over that wall without an identification band, shoot it down."
***
