The Maid's Diary(49)

Benoit says, “Someone was seriously hurt inside that house, Mrs. Rittenberg, and your cooperation would—”

“What?”

“I said, someone was hurt—”

“Who? Who was hurt?” Panic brightens her eyes. Red spots form on her cheeks.

“If you could just answer our questions,” Mal says.

“Dad!” She pushes to her feet and waddles toward the french doors, her hand pressing on the small of her back. The doors swing open before she reaches them.

Her father steps into the room. He takes one look at his daughter and says, “Okay, officers, you need to leave. Now.”

Mal surges to her feet. “Just one more question. Please. A woman’s life could depend on it.”

Labden Wentworth wavers, then glances at his daughter. Mal uses the moment to reach for her phone. Hurriedly, she pulls up the image of Kit Darling provided by Holly McGuire. She holds her phone toward Daisy.

“Do you recognize this person?”

Daisy leans forward, swallows hard. “No.”

“Are you certain? Take a good look.”

“Of course I’m certain. Who is she?”

“Your maid. Up until October 27.”

Daisy goes sheet white. “What?”

“Her name is Kit Darling. She cleaned Rose Cottage for Holly’s Help until October 27, after which you got a new maid.”

Daisy keeps her gaze fixed on the photo as though afraid to meet Mal’s eyes again. “I’m always out of the house when the maid comes. I’ve never laid eyes on this person. If Holly sent someone different at the end of October, I don’t know that, either. All I know is my house gets cleaned.” Her hands start to tremble. “Dad, I—I think I’m going to faint. I need to lie down. Tell these people to get out of here. Now.”

As Annabelle Wentworth hurriedly ushers Mal and Benoit toward the front door, Mal hears Daisy Rittenberg’s voice going shrill as she says to her father, “I don’t know! I have no idea what happened at the house. Of course I’m telling you the truth.”





THE MAID’S DIARY

I’m hot and edgy with anxiety as I insert Daisy’s flash drive into my laptop. I do it as soon as I am back in my apartment. I’m besieged with a sharp urgency. What I saw—what I now know, the evidence I have in my phone—it makes me dangerous to both Jon and Daisy, which in turn makes them dangerous to me. I need to return this drive ASAP.

I open the flash drive folder. There is just one file inside. A video. I click on it and hit PLAY.

At first the footage is confusing. Bad angles, jerky camera, lots of moving people, grainy, low light. Music, loud voices, laughing. But as the footage unspools on my laptop monitor, I realize with horror what I am seeing.

Someone recorded that night.

This is the visual proof that underpins the contents of the documents that Daisy hides under lock and key.

I watch in mounting dread. Then I hear something in the footage. A laugh. It rises above the music and the voices. A high, whooping laugh. It winds up, higher. I go ice cold. I can’t breathe. I hit STOP.

I sit back, struggling to catch my breath.

I rewind a little, hit PLAY again. There it is. Barely audible at first, buried in the party noise. But then it rises, goes higher. Winds up into the whoop. My eyes burn. My heart races. I rewind, hit PLAY again. Then again. And again. I lean close to my monitor. I can identify many of the faces in the footage from that terrible night, including my own. But I can’t see Boon. He never said he was there. But he is. He’s here, in this footage—not a doubt in my heart. That’s his laugh. I’d know it anywhere in this world. No one has a laugh like Boon’s. Surely?

I slump back, energy punched out of me. All this time. All these years of friendship, of him caring for me . . . and he knew. He was there. He saw. And he never came forward.

He never told the police what he surely must have witnessed, given this footage. Not only that, Boon appears to have found the assault that night laughable.

He’s told me only that he believed my claims from “back then.” But he never confessed to me he was there. Not even close. The betrayal is overwhelming. Especially on the back of those signatures at the bottom of one of the documents in Daisy’s safe. I can’t seem to even begin to process yet how this changes everything that I thought was true in my life over the past two decades. Talk about dropping through a trapdoor. Talk about ambiguous images. When you suddenly see the old, evil hag in the image of the beautiful young woman, you cannot unsee her.

I begin to cry. Great big body-shuddering sobs.

Fuck.

I’ve lost a friend. If he ever was one.

I put my hands over my eyes. I press my head. The pain is intense. Bam Bam Bam. A mallet that hammers inside my skull.

But now I have proof. After eighteen years, I have proof. It’s all here. It’s been here all this time, all those lost and painful and dead years. Locked in fucking Daisy Rittenberg’s safe.

What in the hell for? Why does she keep it? Surely she must know what this will do to her husband if it gets out? Maybe that’s exactly why she keeps it. To control Jon.

Charley’s warning slithers into my brain. “I don’t know what you want with the Rittenbergs, Kit, but be careful. You might think Jon Rittenberg is bad, and he is, but he’s just your generic entitled male asshole. His wife, though—Daisy Rittenberg—she’s dangerous.”