Chapter 3 - The Man in the Photograph
Adrian halted. Daniel Mercer had built the Harlow Grand into the city's grandest hotel. He had also died two years after the Saint Alder fire, insisting the accident had been investigated thoroughly. Adrian had believed him. Believing him was easier than looking closely at the five faces mounted on the memorial wall.
"What did he sign?" Adrian asked.
Celeste smiled, just barely. "Ask your little investigator. She knows."
Iris didn't. That was the first thing about the evening she was willing to admit.
Ava Park, a local reporter attending as someone's guest, stepped from behind a dining table with her phone recording. "Can we get a straight answer about why the exits were blocked?"
Holt reached for her phone. Adrian stepped between them. "Touch one guest, Cedric, and you lose your job."
"You don't understand the exposure, sir."
"I understand locked doors."
Eddie returned with news that the east stairwell was open all the way to the street. Adrian told him to help the guests leave and to call the fire department. Iris, Adrian, and Marisol took the service corridor. Here the walls were scuffed, the carpet thin, and the air smelled faintly of bleach and old steam. Marisol moved without hesitation, passing the laundry carts and the staff lockers as if these were the building's true halls of power.
"My dad was Mateo Reyes," she said. "He fixed boilers here for twenty-four years. They blamed him for the fire, and half the people who condemned him had never been downstairs."
"He's still at Eastfield?" Iris asked.
Marisol nodded. "Nine years, with no proof anyone would listen to."
On the landing, Adrian found a framed black-and-white photograph hanging crookedly beside an old fire certificate. His father stood in front of the hotel's loading dock, smiling next to a younger Mateo Reyes. Between them stood Rosa Navarro, Iris's mother, holding a birthday cake.
"I remember her," Adrian whispered. "She made sure the banquet team ate before the guests."
"She went back for a dishwasher," Iris said. "That's how she died. Or that's what they told me."
Marisol took a worn envelope from her apron. "Owen gave me this if anything happened. I wasn't supposed to open it."
Across its front, in faded blue ink, Rosa Navarro had written four words:
FOR IRIS, WHEN SAFE.
May you like
Iris opened the envelope. Inside lay a photograph of a red metal door, a stamped maintenance sheet, and one sentence in her mother's handwriting.
They locked it from the outside.
