Chapter 6 - Searching the Kitchen
I stayed hidden behind the drapes until the sounds of footsteps faded upstairs. Dad had gone to his study to drink himself into numbness, and Mother was rattling hangers in Julian’s second-floor bedroom suite.
Downstairs, the water stopped running in the kitchen.
I heard the back door click shut—Bianca taking the trash bags out to the detached garage bins.
I had about three minutes.
I slipped out from behind the curtain and moved across the hardwood floor on silent stockinged feet. The kitchen smelled of lemon dish soap and burning grease from the garbage disposal. The porcelain plates were already stacked in the dishwasher, scrubbed clean of any chemical residue.
Bianca was thorough. But she wasn't professional.
I bypassed the main trash bin in the kitchen—she would have emptied that first. Instead, I headed straight for the small powder room tucked beneath the grand staircase.
Bianca had spent twenty minutes in here before dinner fixing her makeup.
I slipped inside, locked the door without a sound, and flicked on the vanity light.
The room was immaculate: scented soaps, monogrammed guest towels. But beneath the vanity was a tiny chrome pedal-bin, lined with a plastic shopping bag.
I knelt down, pulled out my gloves again, and stepped on the pedal.
May you like
Inside was a discarded tissue stained with crimson lipstick, a couple of dental floss picks, and at the bottom, an empty, amber-tinted glass vial no larger than my thumb.
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