Chapter 7 - The House With Yellow Curtains

Sadie's home was a narrow rented house with yellow curtains, a patch of mint growing in a bucket, and a paper sign on the refrigerator that said DON'T FORGET YOUR LIBRARY BOOK.

Julian stood in the doorway while Serrano cleared the rooms. He had imagined Nora for years as a vanished figure on a stormy bridge. The dirty sneakers beneath the coat rack hurt worse. They were evidence of mornings and birthdays he had never known existed.

"She likes yellow," Sadie told him. "Mom says it makes rainy days less rude."

"Sounds like her," Julian said.

"You really knew her?"

"I did. I loved her."

Sadie looked at him for a long moment. "Then why didn't you look harder?"

There was no easy answer. Julian had paid investigators, fought the presumption-of-death petition, and then let Camille persuade him that grief could become obsession. None of that had helped Nora or Sadie.

"I looked in the wrong places," he said. "And I believed people I shouldn't have."

They found the red storybook box beneath the stairs. It held a cracked picture book, three school drawings, an old theater ticket, and a notebook wrapped in a grocery bag.

Serrano opened it carefully. It contained dates, payment amounts, and lab sample numbers. Several pages had names written in the margins: Grant Baird, Camille Duvall, and Martin Keene, Julian's uncle and the fund's longtime treasurer.

Julian stared at the third name. "Martin has been in my family longer than I've been alive."

"That doesn't make him innocent," Serrano said.

On the last page Nora had drawn a small square containing the number 418, followed by the words ORIGINALS BEFORE EDITS.

"Four-eighteen," Sadie repeated. "That's the number Mom made me practice."

"And the storage place?" Serrano asked.

Sadie nodded.

A car engine started outside. Julian moved to the window. A gray sedan was idling across the street. Someone raised a camera toward the house.

"Get away from the glass," he told Sadie.

The sedan accelerated just as two officers stepped onto the porch. One of them got a partial license plate. Serrano called it in.

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Minutes later, a reply came over her radio: the vehicle was registered to a shell company whose mailing address belonged to the Keene Civic Fund.

Then a second call arrived. Martin Keene had reported Julian's company credit card stolen and his bank accounts temporarily frozen.