Chapter 3 - The Woman Behind the Wall

I stood motionless in the dark. Then a panel beside the closet slid sideways, revealing a narrow maintenance passage.

Inez Calder stepped out clutching a canvas bag. She had been our head housekeeper when I was a child, the woman who brought soup whenever my mother worked late. Her gray hair had come loose from its braid.

"Inez? The hospital said you died last winter."

"That's what Graham Voss paid them to say." Her hands shook. "We have maybe three minutes."

"Who's 'we'?"

She looked past me. "Where's Miles?"

"I don't know."

"Then we don't have three minutes."

Inez pulled a small brass clock key from her pocket. "Your father kept records. Every evening he wound that clock, even after somebody replaced its insides with a battery. Look carefully at the base."

I ran my fingers around the clock. A brass plate loosened and a folded paper slid out. On it was a list of employee names, each crossed out in red, beside amounts totaling millions of dollars.

"Those are pension withdrawals," I said.

"Money stolen from people who scrubbed this hotel's floors for thirty years." Inez swallowed. "Your father found the accounts. Voss found out he knew."

A sound came from the corridor: a wheeled cart, moving slowly.

"They know you're here," Inez whispered.

I reached for my phone. No signal. The dark screen reflected the face of a woman who suddenly looked much younger than thirty-seven.

"Come with me."

"I can't. They'll find my granddaughter."

"Where is she?"

"Ask Delaney Price. She knows where Voss hides the families."

The door handle rattled. Someone punched numbers into the exterior service lock.

Inez pushed me toward the maintenance passage. "Your father didn't die at eleven seventeen. That clock was stopped to create an alibi."

"For whom?"

The suite door opened. A beam of light cut across the floor.

Inez shoved me into the passage and slid the panel shut. Through a crack, I watched Conrad Pike step inside, followed by a second man carrying a black trash bag.

"The boss wants everything gone," Pike said. "Including the old woman."

A hand settled over my mouth from behind.

I struggled until a familiar voice whispered in my ear, "It's me, Vivian. Don't make a sound."

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Miles had found another way into the wall.

Then Pike called from the bedroom, "We've got the housekeeper. Where's the daughter?"