Chapter 4 - THE HONEY
Mateo loved honey in warm milk.
Leonor knew it.
Everyone did.
The honey bottle recovered from the service pantry was tested.
It contained pesticide contamination.
The concentration was low.
Not enough to guarantee catastrophic poisoning from a single serving.
Enough that repeated exposure could plausibly produce illness.
My stomach turned when Nicolás told me.
“I gave him that milk.”
He was crying.
Not loudly.
Nicolás rarely did anything loudly unless furious.
“I heated it.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I handed it to him.”
“You didn’t know.”
The sentence did not absolve his feelings.
But it was true.
Investigators examined fingerprints and DNA cautiously.
Household items naturally carry multiple people’s traces.
More useful were purchase records.
Leonor bought the garden chemical herself.
Normal.
She gardened.
Then investigators found she purchased a second identical bottle three months later even though landscaping staff supplied all routine treatments.
Why?
She claimed aphids.
The gardener said she had been specifically instructed not to apply chemicals personally around the villa because Mateo frequently played outside.
Then came digital searches from Leonor’s tablet.
Questions about pesticide exposure.
Symptoms.
Detection windows.
Whether repeated low exposure could appear like gastrointestinal disease.
That evidence required proper forensic authentication.
Once verified, it became difficult to explain innocently.
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But motive remained missing.
Until Nicolás opened his father’s trust documents.
