The Maid's Diary(90)

Mal runs her tongue over her teeth. “Daisy, why did Kit Darling recently ask to be excused from cleaning your home?”

Rossi says, “My client inquired about the change because she felt her maid was doing a good job. She was informed by Holly’s Help that it was the maid herself who requested a transfer due to a scheduling conflict. Now if you’re done here, Sergeant, we need to get my client to see a doctor.”

“Two more questions. Daisy, did you know that your maid, Kit Darling, was the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who accused your husband of aggravated sexual assault eighteen years ago?”

Daisy’s face goes deep red. She wipes her mouth with a trembling hand and says to her lawyer, “I’m not feeling well. I’m going to faint.”

Emilio Rossi surges to his feet. He reaches for Daisy’s arm to help her up from her chair. “We’re done here.”

“One more,” Mal says firmly. “Do you recognize these people?” She slides two photos across the table and turns them to face Daisy.

She glances at them. “No.”

Mal taps one photo. “This here is Vanessa North. And this here”—she taps the other—“is Haruto North. These are your friends.”

The redness deepens in Daisy’s face. She refuses to look up. “That’s not them.”

“It is them. These are the owners of the house you attended for dinner.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think I’m going to pass out. I—I need a doctor.”

As Rossi helps Daisy up and assists her to the door, he glances over his shoulder and says to Mal, “The missing maid was a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who accused Jon Rittenberg of aggravated sexual assault? Sounds like you have motive for the husband right there, Detective. Imagine finding out your maid was the same woman who tried to sink your career and take you down all those years ago.”

They exit. The door swings shut behind them.

Mal hurriedly gathers up her file and photos. Before going to interview Jon Rittenberg, she stops by the bullpen.

“Any word on Saelim?” Mal asks Lula.

“Negative,” Lula says as she reaches for her phone. “He’s still MIA. How’d it go with Daisy Rittenberg?”

“She’s seen the writing on the wall,” Mal says. “She just threw her whole husband under the bus. Now to hear what he has to say about that.”





MAL


November 2, 2019. Saturday.

Ex-Olympian, double gold medalist “JonJon” Rittenberg, once a shining example of male athletic prowess, sits slumped with his head in his hands on the table. His lawyer—a woman who puts Mal in mind of Tamara Adler—comes sharply to her feet as Mal enters the interview room. She offers a manicured hand. “I’m Sandra Ling, Jon Rittenberg’s counsel.”

Mal grips the lawyer’s slender, soft hand and pumps it hard. “Sergeant Mallory Van Alst.” She takes a seat and puts her file on the table in front of her. The room is warm and stinks of body odor and metabolized alcohol radiating out of Jon Rittenberg’s pores. He’s unshaven, disheveled. The bandage on his hand is filthy.

“I’m going to call you Jon, if that’s okay?” Mal prefers to use first names in interrogations. It hits harder, closer. More personal.

Jon lifts his head from the table and glares at her. A bitter hatred coils in his eyes.

“No comment,” he says. “You have nothing to charge me with, no right to hold me. I have done nothing wrong. Tell her, Sandra,” he orders his lawyer. “Sandra will say whatever we need to say.” He puts his head down with a small groan. Clearly unwell. The scratches down his face and neck appear infected.

“My client needs medical attention,” Sandra Ling says. “Police officers caused him bodily injury during arrest, and—”

“I heard you attempted to flee and fell because you were intoxicated, Jon,” Mal says. “And those scratches on your neck and the injury on your hand—I saw them myself prior to your arrest. How did you get those cuts?”

“He was pushed to the ground by police officers during arrest,” says Ling.

“Oh, please,” Mal says, turning her attention to the lawyer. “You can see yourself those scratches are not fresh. They look to me like defensive wounds incurred during a violent assault. Is that how you got them, Jon? What happened? How did you hurt yourself?”

Jon refuses to lift his head to look at her.

“How about you tell me in your own words what happened when you and your wife arrived at the Glass House at six fourteen p.m. on Halloween evening?”

He still doesn’t move. His lawyer says, “He was never at the—”

Mal raises her hand, halting the lawyer. “We don’t need games. Jon. We have your wife’s statement. She says you both arrived in your Audi at the Glass House around six fourteen p.m. We have witness statements that corroborate this. We also have witnesses who saw your car enter the ADMAC construction site in North Vancouver later that night.”

He glances up sharply. “That’s bullshit. I was never there. I—”

His lawyer places her hand firmly on her client’s arm and shoots him a warning look.

But he continues. “I wasn’t at any ADMAC site. I did return to the Glass House, okay, I—”