Chapter 53 - The Scent of Lavender and Ash
The precinct room in Litchfield smelled of burnt coffee, wet wool, and old cardboard. Lily was sitting in the corner office with Detective Miller’s wife, who had brought a sketchbook and colored pencils, but I refused to sit. I paced the linoleum floor outside the glass partition, watching Julian sit beneath the glare of the fluorescent tubes.
Miller dropped a heavy accordion folder onto the laminate table. The slap of paper broke the silence like a dropped plate.
"He's clean, Nora," Miller muttered, running a thick hand across his stubble. "Julian Moreau, nineteen years old. Enrolled at McGill. No record, no warrants, no flags. His mother died of metastatic breast cancer ten days ago in Montreal General. The hospital certified the death. But that's not why my phone hasn't stopped ringing since noon."
"Explain the writ," I demanded, leaning over the table until my knuckles were white. "Explain how Melissa—the woman who spat on my kitchen floor, who watched her feral boys stomp Lily's Easter dress into grease, who signed twenty-six forged equity transfers—walks out of Danbury Federal Correctional Institution on an administrative error."
Miller pulled a single sheet from the folder and pushed it across to me. It was stamped with the seal of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
"The fingerprints on the custody intake didn't match the Department of Motor Vehicles database from 2012," Miller said, his voice dropping to a gravelly murmur. "When they arrested the woman at the Oak Ridge cottage, she refused to speak without counsel. Vance family lawyers filed an immediate discrepancy claim. The woman in Danbury was born Catherine Moreau. She’s Julian’s aunt. Melissa Vance never set foot in the courthouse."
The room seemed to tilt. The memories of that disastrous Easter Sunday clawed their way back into my throat: the sharp, cruel laughter, the mocking disdain, the cold, dead eyes Melissa had turned on me when I told everyone to get off my property.
"They switched," I whispered, the nausea rising hot and bitter. "They switched places before the marshals raided the cottage."
"No," Julian's voice came through the open door of the interview room. He stepped out under an officer's watchful eye, his hands free now. "They didn't switch at the cottage, Nora. Catherine took Melissa's place three weeks ago when the Grand Jury issued the sealed indictments. Melissa gave her twenty thousand dollars cash and promised to clear her medical debts. And Melissa took the midnight train north across the Vermont border with the real ledger."
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"And what was in that ledger?" I asked, turning on him.
Julian looked at the floor, his shoulders shaking. "The original deed to the water rights under Oak Ridge. The ones your father signed over to my mother before Evelyn poisoned his coffee."
