Chapter 3 - The Seventeenth Tick
The click was so soft Evelyn almost convinced herself she had imagined it.
Alexander did not.
He crossed the foyer in three long strides and pressed his palm against the carved walnut panel behind the grandfather clock.
Nothing moved.
Mrs. Bell whispered, "Again."
"Again what?" Evelyn asked.
"Count."
Alexander's eyes flicked to the clock face.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
He counted under his breath.
Evelyn heard only fragments.
"Twelve... thirteen... fourteen..."
At sixteen, he slid his fingers along the molding.
The clock hesitated.
Seventeen.
A hidden latch released beneath his hand.
The wall panel opened half an inch.
Mrs. Bell sat heavily on the bottom stair.
"I have cleaned this room for thirty-four years," she said. "I never knew that was there."
Alexander pulled the panel wider.
Behind it was not a room.
It was a narrow cavity between the foyer wall and the old service corridor, barely wide enough for a man's shoulders.
Inside sat a metal document box covered in dust.
Evelyn inserted the brass key.
It turned once.
The lid opened.
On top lay a folded note in Clara's handwriting.
Evelyn knew it before she touched it.
Her sister formed capital E's with a backward loop.
She had done it since they were children.
Evelyn unfolded the paper.
If Alexander is dead, missing, or suddenly called unstable, do not trust the first person who offers to help.
Evelyn stopped breathing.
Below that sentence was a second.
If Nathan says I was confused, remember that he always calls the truth confusion when the truth becomes expensive.
Alexander read over her shoulder.
His face gave nothing away, but the tendons in his hand stood out white beneath the skin.
The box contained four things.
A mini cassette recorder.
A stack of medical envelopes tied with blue ribbon.
A brass room tag stamped NURSERY 2B.
And a strip of photographic negatives.
"Mrs. Bell," Evelyn said, "when did Clara give this to you?"
"Two nights before she died."
Alexander looked up.
"You told the police she had been cheerful that week."
The old woman flinched.
"Mr. Nathan told me not to make trouble for the children."
"That wasn't my question."
Mrs. Bell pressed one hand to her chest.
"She was terrified."
A log shifted in the drawing-room fireplace.
The sound made all three of them turn.
The manor suddenly felt enormous.
Too many hallways.
Too many doors.
Too many places where a person could stand unseen.
Alexander closed the hidden panel and carried the box into the library.
He locked the doors behind them.
Evelyn placed the cassette recorder on the desk.
"Does it work?"
Mrs. Bell disappeared into a cabinet and returned with batteries so quickly that Evelyn almost laughed.
"I keep everything," the housekeeper said.
"Apparently," Alexander murmured.
The recorder clicked.
Static breathed through the tiny speaker.
Then Clara's voice filled the room.
Thin.
Tired.
Alive.
Evelyn gripped the edge of the desk.
"October sixth," Clara said on the tape. "If I lose my nerve tomorrow, this will say what I couldn't. Daniel's blood panel came back wrong. Alexander is O negative. I am A positive. Daniel's expanded typing shows markers that shouldn't be there. Dr. Vale says it can happen. I don't believe him. Nathan was in the nursery at 2:17 the morning Daniel was born. He told me he came to see Alexander. Alexander wasn't there."
The tape crackled.
A chair scraped in the recorded room.
Clara inhaled sharply.
"I found a bill from Fairfax Reproductive Diagnostics. I never used Fairfax. Someone ordered a paternity panel using Daniel's sample. The result page is missing. Nathan has the result. I saw it in his hand."
The recording stopped.
Evelyn stared at the machine.
"That's all?"
Alexander turned the cassette over.
Side B.
He pressed play.
Clara again.
"If Evelyn is hearing this, I'm sorry. You were right about Nathan watching people instead of listening to them. You said it made you feel like furniture being measured for a room. I laughed. I shouldn't have."
Evelyn covered her mouth.
Her sister had said that eight years ago.
At Daniel's christening.
She had forgotten.
Or forced herself to forget.
The tape continued.
"There was a car accident after Daniel was born. Everyone called it bad weather. It wasn't. The brake line on Alexander's car had been cut. Evelyn borrowed the car that night. She nearly died because someone expected Alexander to be driving. Nathan came to the hospital before anyone called him. I saw him through the glass."
Evelyn's hand went numb.
The photograph.
Her in the hospital bed.
Nathan at the doorway.
She had been told he arrived because Clara contacted him.
Clara had insisted she did not.
At the time, Evelyn thought grief and exhaustion were making everyone contradict one another.
Now the contradictions had shape.
Alexander shut off the recorder.
"That's what I found before the plane crash," he said.
Evelyn turned toward him.
"You knew about the brake line?"
"I learned three days before I disappeared."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"I was trying to prove who did it."
"By meeting a divorce attorney?"
"He wasn't a divorce attorney. He specialized in asset protection and emergency family injunctions. Nathan knew his firm handled divorces, so that was the story he built around it."
Evelyn's anger faltered but did not disappear.
"And Geneva?"
Alexander looked at the cassette.
"I was going to meet the laboratory director who ordered Daniel's old paternity panel. He had moved to Switzerland."
The clock in the foyer ticked through the wall.
Sixteen beats.
A pause.
Seventeen.
Evelyn finally asked the question she had been avoiding.
"Why do you count seventeen?"
Alexander leaned back against the desk.
"The room they kept me in had an infusion pump. Every seventeen seconds it made a weak click."
"For two years?"
"Not the same pump. Same model. Same setting."
His voice flattened.
"I learned how long I stayed awake after each injection by counting the clicks. At first I reached forty. Later, twelve. Near the end, sometimes three."
Evelyn's eyes burned.
He looked away before she could touch him.
"Don't pity me yet," he said. "You may need the energy for something else."
A soft knock came at the library door.
Daniel stood outside in his pajamas.
Mrs. Bell opened it a few inches.
"You should be asleep."
"I heard Aunt Evelyn crying."
Evelyn wiped her face.
"I'm okay."
Daniel looked at Alexander.
"I remember something."
Alexander's body went still.
"What?"
"Uncle Nathan told me you burned."
"You knew that."
"No." Daniel stepped into the room. "I mean he told me he watched it happen."
Evelyn frowned.
"Watched what happen?"
"The plane."
Alexander stared at him.
Daniel rubbed his palms against his pajama pants.
"I asked why he didn't save you. He said it was too hot and the windows exploded. He said he could hear the fuel tanks popping."
Evelyn's skin tightened.
Nathan had given police a sworn statement saying he was in Washington that night.
Three hundred miles from the private airfield.
Alexander crouched until he was eye level with Daniel.
"When did he tell you that?"
Daniel thought.
"The night after the funeral."
"Anything else?"
The boy's brow wrinkled.
"He smelled weird. Like... like the garage after Grandpa used to clean tools."
"Solvent?"
"Maybe."
Alexander rose so fast the chair behind him scraped backward.
Evelyn grabbed his wrist.
"What?"
He looked at her.
"Aviation degreaser."
The library phone rang.
All of them jumped.
Mrs. Bell answered.
"Hawthorne Manor."
She listened.
Her face slowly lost its color.
Then she held the receiver toward Alexander.
"It's Detective Voss."
Alexander took it.
"Yes?"
A long pause.
His expression hardened.
"When?"
Another pause.
"Don't touch anything until I get there."
He hung up.
Evelyn's heart began pounding.
"What happened?"
Alexander looked at Daniel first.
May you like
Then at the cassette recorder.
"The hangar where my plane went down just caught fire."
