Chapter 4 - Locker 214
I put the call on speaker.
June lifted her phone and began recording.
“What did she steal?”
“A collection of business records.
Old records.
Easy to misunderstand.”
“If they’re old, why do you want them?”
A small pause.
“Because your mother was ill.
And because I’d hate to see you embarrass yourself by repeating things she believed when she wasn’t well.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Don’t talk about her like that.”
“I can help with your debts.”
There it was.
Not sympathy.
A price.
“How do you know I have debts?”
“Nora.
Everyone has debts.”
I ended the call.
June looked at the brass key.
“We’re not going to that locker alone.”
This time, I called Ruth.
She arrived in an ordinary sedan without Vincent.
She listened to the recording, then asked permission to make a copy.
“You’re not taking my mother’s things.”
“No,” she said.
“But someone is looking for them.
We need to know what he thinks you have.”
South Station smelled like wet coats and burnt coffee.
The lockers were in a staffed luggage-storage room off the main concourse.
Mom had paid for a long-term compartment under our name.
I showed identification.
The attendant checked his ledger and let us through.
Inside Locker 214 was a canvas grocery bag.
Three notebooks.
A small digital recorder.
A photograph.
And an envelope addressed to a reporter named Dana Wells.
I recognized her name.
She had written about families forced out of apartment buildings after suspicious fires.
Ruth stepped back while I opened the first notebook.
Dates.
Account numbers.
Payments marked as repairs.
Beside one entry, my mother had written:
No repairs completed.
Ask Daniel.
The photograph showed Mom standing between Vincent and a thin man with glasses.
On the back:
Daniel’s last Friday.
Three days before the river.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
Ruth looked at the picture.
“Daniel Price.
He handled accounts for several Vale properties.”
“Handled?”
“He died.”
June leaned closer to the notebook.
“Nora.”
A folded delivery receipt had slipped from its pages.
Six weeks earlier, Mom had sent a package to Dana Wells.
Two days before she died.
I reached for my phone.
Ruth suddenly caught my wrist.
Across the concourse, a man in a gray coat had stopped pretending to read the departure board.
May you like
He was watching us.
And in his hand was a photograph of me.
