Cassie tried her best not to show any emotion, but she couldn’t help it. Tears of shock and relief welled up her eyes and she felt sobs erupting. She had her life again. The detective had handed her future back to her.
“Thank you,” she whispered. It was all she could manage to say without breaking down completely.
“Off the record, and purely between ourselves, does the name Pierre Dubois mean anything to you?”
Cassie’s head jerked up. She stared, appalled, at the dark-haired detective. She knew that her reaction had given the game away. There was no way she could hide her knee-jerk recognition of that name.
The detective continued calmly.
“How about Mr. Dellucci, from the Social Services office in Milan?”
Cassie’s eyebrows shot up and her mouth fell open. Where was this going? Was she really cleared or was this a devious plan to trick her into a confession after all? How on earth had she found out that Cassie had consulted him?
Falcone’s gaze felt laser sharp, as if she was seeing all the way into Cassie’s mind and reading her thoughts.
“Your reaction tells me that you do know. There is more to this than a simple accident, is there not?”
Cassie couldn’t dare to move, or breathe. What would the detective say next? That she was arrested on different charges?
Then the detective did something even worse.
She took a paper packet out of her purse, and from it, she produced the thin ceramic shard she had picked up the previous evening.
Cassie stared at the piece—glossy rust-red on the outside, white on the inside. She remembered how it had felt as that vase had crashed down onto her head, exploding her vision into a burst of stars. She remembered how Ms. Rossi had looked. She’d been deranged with anger. She would have killed Cassie. She was sure of it. She would have killed her, and who knew what the consequences would have been or how she would have attempted to cover it up?
Probably she would have done a better job than Cassie and the girls, and would not have overlooked that telltale shard. It must have fallen with the white surface upward, and been close to invisible against the pale granite tiles.
“It seems strange to have found this, in such a tidy house, with nothing else out of place,” the detective continued in a deceptively soft voice. “I can’t stop thinking about it, and what it might mean. And I can’t stop wondering whether, if the truth had been told to me, it might have allowed me to expose irregularities in the social services system, which could save other children one day. Perhaps you know about those irregularities, because you have experienced them for yourself?”
Seeing that she expected some kind of answer, Cassie nodded silently. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
“You know, it’s a strange thing in law enforcement,” the detective continued in almost conversational tones. “Sometimes the same names come up over and over again. It’s as if some people cannot stay out of trouble—or else, they are in some way drawn to it.”
Cassie stared at her wordlessly.
“I will remember your name. And if it comes up again, believe me, I will do everything in my power to ensure that the full truth is uncovered and that justice gets done, whoever it ends up exposing.”
The detective stood up, and Cassie felt as if the threatening atmosphere had lifted just a little. She continued, in a calm and professional tone.
“I will go and say goodbye to the girls now, and then I will brief the cook and the other staff on the sad events of last night. Thank you for helping to hold the fort here today. The girls’ father, Mr. Morandi, will be here in the early evening.”
“I—I will keep on doing my best,” Cassie offered in a small voice, as Falcone turned and walked out.
She felt dazed by the detective’s words. Falcone had implied that she was, if not a criminal, somebody who attracted incidents into their life, and who had so far managed to get away without any repercussions.
Now that the detective had gone, she wished she’d summoned up the courage to have her say. To explain that she’d been an entirely innocent party trying to survive in an untenable situation. She had never gone looking for trouble in any way.
Then Cassie caught herself, because maybe some of what the detective had said was true. In every situation there were choices to make. She remembered her hands—first curved into claws and then suddenly bunched into fists. That had been a choice. She didn’t know whether it had been a good or bad choice, but it had been a choice that could easily have landed her in jail.
Looking back, Cassie couldn’t believe she had gotten away with it. No wonder the detective had been frustrated. She had sensed that there was more to the situation, but circumstances and witnesses had worked against her. As someone whose job was to uphold the law and justice, Cassie could guess how she felt. Crime was crime. That fact gave her a twinge of guilt.
Then she thought about Nonna, and her guilt crystallized into despair. She couldn’t believe that for one terrible moment, she’d seriously considered murdering her so that there would be no witnesses to what she had done.
That would have been a heinous, cold-blooded crime, and perhaps that was what the detective had been warning her against. Committing one crime could easily lead to others, and eventually, anyone’s luck would run out.
Feeling sick with regret, Cassie headed upstairs to check on Nonna.
She opened the bedroom door and walked in, dreading that Nonna would be coherent again and would repeat those terrible accusations, or demand that the police officer come back. Even
