- A Mother Who Knew Too Much
Celeste was brought in for questioning the following afternoon. Ortiz told me only what she could disclose. Celeste claimed Mara had left voluntarily and that the belongings at the farm were ordinary abandoned property. When asked why she had told me nobody would find anything, she said I had misunderstood a family argument.
But investigators had located a contractor’s invoice for renovation work at the farm during the week Mara disappeared. The invoice was addressed to Celeste. A note on the reverse instructed the crew to avoid the north cellar because the foundation was unstable. A second invoice, dated the next day, described a locked cabinet installed beneath the stairs.
Celeste insisted she had no memory of those repairs.
“What about the emerald necklace?” I asked Daniel when he came to see me. “She’s wearing property that belongs to me.”
“We’ve included it in the inventory of disputed assets. It’s a separate matter, but it helps establish how quickly they treated your property as theirs.”
