Chapter 3 - The Call Inside the Wall
The ringing came from a place where no phone should have been.
Leo crawled faster through the dusty service passage, scraping his elbows against old brick. The sound grew louder until he reached a wooden panel behind the library shelves.
He pushed it open and dropped into a narrow storage closet.
The phone rang again.
It was an old green desk phone sitting on a crate beneath a sheet.
No cord ran to the wall.
Leo lifted the receiver.
“Hello?”
For two seconds, there was nothing but breathing.
Then a woman whispered, “Is this Leo?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God.”
He recognized the voice.
“Mrs. Alvarez?”
Maria Alvarez had worked for Grandpa for twenty-six years. She had disappeared from the estate a week after Henry vanished. Richard told everyone she had stolen jewelry and fled.
“I did not steal anything,” she said before Leo could ask. “Your grandfather made me leave because Richard was watching me.”
“Where is Grandpa?”
A pause.
“Not on the phone.”
Leo clenched the receiver. “He’s alive, isn’t he?”
Another pause, longer this time.
“Find the blue room,” she said. “But do not go through the main hall. Richard changed the locks yesterday.”
“Why?”
“Because Martin found the old building plans.”
Leo looked toward the closet door.
“What’s in the blue room?”
“The reason they need your grandfather dead.”
The line clicked.
A second later, the closet door opened.
Leo spun around.
His mother stood there, pale and breathless.
“Leo.”
He hid the recorder behind his back.
Claire closed the door quickly.
“I’m not giving it to Richard,” she whispered.
Leo searched her face.
Grandpa had said she could be trusted.
But Leo had also heard her arguing with Henry two days before he disappeared.
She had shouted, I am done protecting you.
“I heard you fight with Grandpa,” Leo said.
Pain flashed across her face.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he told me he thought Richard was stealing from the company, and I didn’t believe him.”
Leo said nothing.
Claire looked at the old phone.
“Who called?”
“Mrs. Alvarez.”
Her eyes widened.
Before either of them could speak again, footsteps entered the library.
Martin Pike’s voice came through the wall.
“Search every room. The boy has the key.”
Richard answered, “And when we find him?”
Martin’s reply was low and cold.
“We make sure he never reaches the blue room.”
Claire stared at her son.
May you like
Then she took his hand.
“Come on,” she whispered. “I know another way.”
