Chapter 4 - The Apartment
Nora drove through a red light.
Adrian braced one hand against the dashboard.
“Slow down.”
“My mother is bleeding.”
“Ruth has someone there.”
“Then tell them to put her on the phone.”
He did.
A strange man answered.
“I’m a neighbor. Mrs. Reed cut her hand.”
Nora nearly sobbed.
“Where is she?”
“In my apartment. Two men came asking questions. She shut the door on one of them, broke a glass, and climbed over to my fire escape.”
That sounded like her mother.
Terrified and furious at the same time.
“Let me talk to her.”
A rustle.
Then, “Nora?”
“Mom.”
“Don’t you come here.”
“What did they want?”
“Your brother’s things.”
The steering wheel slipped beneath Nora’s wet palms.
“What things?”
“They said the insurance company needed his personal records.”
Adrian’s expression changed.
Patricia kept talking.
“I told them insurance agents usually call before forcing a door open.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Six stitches, probably. Nothing compared to what I’ll do when I find you.”
Nora laughed once.
It came out broken.
Adrian took the phone.
“Mrs. Reed, my name is Adrian Vale.”
Silence.
Then her mother said, “You stay away from my daughter.”
“I’m trying to help her.”
“Your help put my son in a box.”
Nora stared through the windshield.
Adrian said nothing.
Not even a denial.
They met Ruth Calder twenty minutes later beneath the concrete roof of a closed gas station.
She was in her sixties, wore running shoes with a business suit, and looked at Adrian as though she had been expecting him to make her night worse.
“This is Nora,” he said.
“I figured.”
Ruth opened her back door.
“Your mother is going somewhere safe. My investigator is with her.”
“Are you his lawyer?”
“Sometimes. Tonight, I suggest you get one of your own.”
Nora liked her immediately.
Adrian’s phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen and turned it so they could see.
A security image showed the woman in the champagne dress leaving through a basement corridor.
Martin walked beside her.
His hand was clamped around her elbow.
Ruth enlarged the photograph.
“Oh, God.”
“You know her?” Nora asked.
“Her name isn’t Evelyn Shaw.”
Adrian stared at the image.
Ruth looked at him.
“That’s Celia Voss.”
Nora saw the recognition hit.
May you like
“Who’s Celia Voss?”
“The woman,” Adrian said slowly, “whose funeral my company paid for nine years ago.”
