Chapter 4 - The Empty Apartment
I chased Victor through the ballroom doors and nearly fell on the polished marble. Gideon was right behind me.
Victor reached the elevators first. The doors closed. Gideon hit the stairwell instead and took the steps two at a time. By the time we reached the loading dock, Victor's gray sedan was pulling into traffic.
"Call the police," I said.
Gideon did, giving the dispatcher the plate number he'd memorized. Then he turned to me. "Where does your mother live?"
"Queens. Forty minutes, if the roads behave."
"Mine won't," he said, opening the passenger door of a waiting car. "Get in."
I should have refused. Men who owned hotels were very good at making decisions for people who didn't. But my mother was seventy-one, recovering from a stroke, and somebody had walked into our home using my name.
The apartment door stood open when we arrived. Her slippers were beside the sofa. A pot of rice had burned dry on the stove. Mrs. Delgado waited in the hallway, crying into a tissue.
"They had papers," she told us. "Transfer forms. A medical transport company. I thought maybe they'd arranged rehabilitation."
"She had a doctor's appointment on Tuesday," I said. "Not tonight."
The paper they'd left was stamped HARBOR REST RECOVERY CENTER. The signature beneath the transfer authorization looked like mine, except the last letter leaned the wrong way.
Gideon photographed it. "I didn't authorize this."
"The people from your hotel did."
He took the accusation without flinching. "Then I'm responsible for finding out who gave them permission."
I hated that he sounded sincere. It would have been easier if he had sounded rich.
In the kitchen, I found the dish towel where my mother had kept the brooch. Folded inside was a plain white envelope marked FOR MARA IF I GET SCARED AGAIN.
It held a grocery-store receipt, two photographs, and a letter written slowly in her shaking hand.
Mara, I was wrong to teach you that keeping quiet keeps us safe. Quiet only made them brave. Evelyn Vale saved your life before she saved her son's. I owe her the truth, and I owe you the chance to choose it.
A photograph showed my mother in a laundry uniform beside Evelyn Vale. In the background, a young Conrad Arden stood next to a steel service door fitted with a padlock.
On the back my mother had written: March 14. Inspection day. Picture taken one hour before the fire.
The second photograph had been ripped in half. It showed the same door the morning after. The padlock was still in place, blackened but unbroken.
May you like
Gideon's phone rang. He answered, listened, then gripped the counter.
"They found Victor's car," he said. "It was abandoned by the river. There was blood on the driver's seat."
