Chapter 2 - MY MAID KNEW HOW MY SISTER DIED
The north garage had been sealed since my grandfather’s death.
Dust covered the floor.
Old motorcycles.
Two classic cars.
Furniture nobody wanted enough to throw away.
And beneath a gray tarp sat a black Mercedes.
Elena’s.
I knew before Dominic pulled the cover away.
A scratch beneath the passenger mirror.
A dent in the rear bumper I had given her hell about for six months.
Same license bracket.
Same interior.
No fire damage.
No crash damage.
Nothing.
My sister had supposedly died when that car went through a guardrail and burned on a mountain road.
So what had burned?
I turned toward Allie.
Lily had been left upstairs with the housekeeper.
Allie stood ten feet away, shaking.
“Start talking.”
She looked at Dominic.
“Not in front of him.”
Dominic laughed once.
I did not.
“Leave us.”
He stared.
“Murphy—”
“Now.”
When the garage door closed, I faced Allie.
“How do you know?”
Her eyes stayed on Elena’s car.
“Because my husband drove it here.”
My stomach tightened.
“You were married?”
“Yes.”
“Was?”
“He’s dead.”
“What was his name?”
“Evan Carter.”
I knew it.
Not personally.
But I knew it.
A mechanic who worked for one of our transportation companies.
Killed eighteen months after Elena.
Street robbery, according to the report.
“How was he involved?”
Allie hugged herself.
“Evan came home the night your sister died covered in blood.”
My breathing slowed.
“He said men from the estate made him switch the license plates between two cars.”
“Whose order?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Why bring Elena’s car here?”
“Because someone needed everyone to believe it burned.”
My hands curled.
“What car actually burned?”
Allie shook her head.
“He never told me.”
“Then why keep this secret for three years?”
“Because two days after Evan tried to tell someone, he was dead.”
Silence.
She looked directly at me for the first time.
“I had a baby. I was twenty-three. I got scared.”
That, at least, I understood.
“What happened to the evidence?”
“What evidence?”
“Evan must have kept something.”
Her expression changed.
There.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Miss Carter.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“Not all of it.”
She started crying.
“I found a key after he died.”
“What key?”
“He hid it inside Lily’s stuffed rabbit.”
My body went cold.
“Where is it?”
Allie looked toward the estate above us.
“In my room.”
We retrieved it.
Small brass key.
Number stamped into the metal.
Dominic identified the bank within an hour.
A private institution downtown.
Safe-deposit box.
Registered under Evan Carter.
But when my attorney checked the beneficiary record, another name appeared.
Not Allie.
Not Lily.
Elena Moretti.
May you like
My dead sister had shared a safe-deposit box with my maid’s dead husband.
And according to the access log, somebody had opened it three days ago.
