She steps closer and offers the tray. Dry toast. Again. The woman has declared war on joy and chosen bread as her weapon.
I take one piece because refusing would make her look more closely. “Thank you.”
“You look pleased,” she says. “Should I be concerned?”
“About my mood? Always.”
“About what caused it.”
I smile at her. “That depends on what you think caused it.”
She studies me for a moment. Teresa has the sort of eyes that could belong to an excellent interrogator if she had been born into a profession less respectable than housekeeping. She sees too much. More importantly, she knows when seeing should become silence.
“Dinner at seven,” she says finally. “Youwilleat something with substance.”
“Is that a request?”
“No.”
“How comforting.”
She moves past me. I continue. Only once I reach my room do I take the copied receipt from my sleeve and place it on the desk beside the other pieces of evidence. There aren’t many; that’s been the problem.
A mention of Dante arguing with my father the afternoon before the killing, delivered by a kitchen girl who thought grief made me harmless enough to speak near.
A notation in a transport log, placing Dante’s car out of rotation for three hours longer than reported.
A staff whisper, half-swallowed, about broken glass in one of the outer garages that was repaired before morning.
And now this receipt.
Receipt. Fight. Car.
Not enough.
But enough to suspect. Enough to know.
I draw the road. Mark the station. Mark the private entrance where my father’s car was found. Mark the distance. Mark the time. 21:14.
If Dante bought gas then, he was not where official reports placed him. If he was near the road at 21:14, he had time. If someone saw him after that, there is a fracture in the story.
Find the fracture. Widen it.
I start with staff. At dinner, I ask Teresa whether the kitchen keeps regional supplier lists because I am “trying to understand the household accounts.”
“No, you aren’t,” she replies.
“No,” I agree. “But I’m asking.”
She serves me soup. “The kitchen keeps lists,” she says after I swallow a spoonful. “Not the one you want.”
“How mysterious.”
“You want drivers.”
“Do I?”
She nods. “Drivers know roads. Mechanics know cars. But men who sell cigarettes at gas stations know everything.”
