Chapter 4 - THE LETTER WRITTEN AFTER MY MOTHER DIED
The envelope vanished before they reached the safe room.
No broken lock.
No damaged camera.
Nothing.
Someone with authorized access had taken it.
Larkin sealed the floor.
Penelope hated the phrase.
It sounded too much like the world she had spent years pretending she did not understand.
Twenty minutes later, one security camera yielded something useful.
Thomas.
He had entered the service corridor two minutes before the envelope disappeared.
Larkin watched the footage twice.
“He’ll say coincidence.”
“Is it?”
“With Thomas, coincidence usually sends invoices.”
Penelope folded her arms.
“Find him.”
They found Thomas on the ballroom terrace smoking a cigar.
He looked offended when security escorted him upstairs.
“I didn’t take anything.”
Larkin placed the footage on the table.
“You were outside the safe room.”
“I was meeting someone.”
“Who?”
Thomas looked toward Penelope.
“A woman.”
Penelope almost rolled her eyes.
“Original.”
“She said she knew Eleanor.”
That changed everything.
Thomas reached into his jacket slowly.
Security moved.
He laughed.
“Relax.”
He produced a folded piece of paper.
“She gave me this.”
Penelope recognized the handwriting instantly.
Her knees weakened.
It was Eleanor’s.
Not similar.
Not copied.
Her mother’s impatient capital letters.
The note contained only one sentence.
PENNY, IF YOU ARE READING THIS, THEN LARKIN FINALLY BROUGHT YOU WHERE I NEEDED YOU TO BE.
Penny.
Nobody had called her that since Eleanor.
Penelope sat down.
The paper shook in her hand.
“When did she write this?”
Thomas’s expression had lost its usual cruelty.
“The woman said yesterday.”
Penelope looked up.
“Who was she?”
“About sixty. Red coat. Gray hair.”
“Name?”
“She didn’t give one.”
“What did she look like?”
Thomas hesitated.
Then looked uncomfortable.
“Like you.”
The room went silent.
Penelope felt pressure behind her eyes.
Larkin stepped closer.
“Could it have been Eleanor?”
“I was thirteen when she disappeared.”
“You’d remember your mother.”
“Fifteen years changes a person.”
Thomas interrupted.
“She had a scar here.”
He touched his left eyebrow.
Penelope stopped breathing.
Eleanor had received six stitches above her left eyebrow after falling from a bicycle as a teenager.
Only family knew.
Penelope stood so quickly the chair tipped backward.
“She’s alive.”
Larkin said nothing.
“Say something.”
“I think it’s possible.”
“You knew?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me again.”
“I’m not.”
Penelope turned toward Thomas.
“Where did she go?”
“She walked into the service elevator.”
Security records showed no woman matching that description leaving the hotel.
As if she had disappeared inside the building.
Then Penelope noticed something on the back of her mother’s note.
Numbers.
Six columns.
Small handwritten figures.
To anyone else, meaningless.
To Penelope, familiar.
Eleanor used to hide birthday presents by giving her spreadsheet puzzles.
Penelope began adding.
Subtracting.
Matching columns.
Larkin watched.
“What is it?”
“Not numbers.”
She rearranged them.
A room number emerged.
They took the elevator to the twenty-seventh floor.
Room 2714 was empty.
On the bed lay a single black ledger.
Penelope approached slowly.
A photograph rested on top.
Eleanor Woods.
Older.
Gray-haired.
Alive.
The photograph was dated eleven days earlier.
On the back she had written:
PENELOPE, DO NOT TRUST THOMAS.
May you like
Then beneath it:
AND DO NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH LARKIN UNTIL HE TELLS YOU WHAT HE DID THREE YEARS AGO.
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