Chapter 2 - THE ROOM MY FATHER HAD ALREADY SEEN
By seven that morning, Arthur had replaced his torn shirt, washed the blood from his hands, and become almost impossible to read.
Norah remained exactly where she had been.
Barefoot.
Exhausted.
Furious.
“You knew my father worked for the Costellos?”
“No.”
“You investigated me before hiring me.”
“Basic employment screening.”
“And nobody found it?”
Arthur looked toward the photograph.
“Apparently someone made sure they wouldn’t.”
That frightened her.
Costello security did not miss twenty-year employment records accidentally.
Arthur called Marco DeSantis, head of estate security.
Not upstairs.
To the basement.
Marco arrived five minutes later and stopped when he saw Norah standing beside Arthur.
His eyes moved to the key.
Then the photograph.
Something flashed across his face.
Recognition.
Arthur saw it.
“You know that picture.”
Marco’s expression flattened.
“No.”
Norah spoke before she could think.
“That was a lie.”
Marco looked at her.
Arthur almost smiled.
“Careful, Nora.”
She ignored him.
“His face changed.”
Arthur turned back to Marco.
“She’s right.”
Marco exhaled.
“My father had a copy.”
Arthur went still.
Marco’s father, Enzo DeSantis, had served Salvatore Costello for thirty years.
He died five years earlier.
“What did he say about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Marco.”
“He told me the men in that photograph built the legal side of Costello Freight.”
Norah stared.
“My father?”
Marco nodded.
“Daniel Calloway designed part of the accounting structure.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Apparently not.”
Then Marco looked around the room.
His gaze settled on the boiler wall.
“What?”
Arthur asked.
Marco walked toward it.
Ran one hand along the cinderblock.
Then stopped.
“My father brought me down here once when I was fourteen.”
Norah stared at him.
“This room?”
“It wasn’t a bedroom.”
“What was it?”
“Records storage.”
Her skin prickled.
Arthur stepped toward him.
“What records?”
“I don’t know.”
Marco pointed at the wall behind Norah’s bed.
“There used to be a steel cabinet there.”
Norah looked at the cheap shelf she had placed against the wall.
No cabinet.
But when they moved the bed, one section of cinderblock looked newer than the rest.
Arthur called no workers.
No estate maintenance.
Only Marco.
Within fifteen minutes, they had loosened a false panel.
Behind it was a narrow metal door.
The brass key fit.
Norah’s hands began shaking.
Arthur looked at her.
“You open it.”
“Why me?”
“Your name is on the key.”
She turned it.
Inside were three ledgers.
A cassette recorder.
And an envelope.
The envelope said:
FOR DANIEL CALLOWAY'S DAUGHTER.
Norah stopped.
Her father had been dead for four years.
Somebody had hidden this here long before she ever became a maid in Arthur Costello’s house.
She opened the letter.
The first sentence was in her father’s handwriting.
Norah,
If you are reading this inside the Costello house, then the one thing I spent my life trying to prevent has already happened.
May you like
And beneath it:
You owe them nothing.
