Chapter 3 - LOCKER 418
Dominic read the message a third time.
As if repetition might transform the handwriting into someone else's.
It didn't.
He knew his mother's handwriting.
Every Christmas card.
Every note in his school lunch.
Every impatient message she had left on his father's desk.
“That’s hers,” he whispered.
Claire stared at the photograph.
“My mother never mentioned her.”
Adrian's expression darkened.
“She had reasons.”
Claire turned on him.
“You keep saying that.”
“Claire—”
“You spoke to my mother behind my back. You saw this watch in her apartment. And apparently everybody knew pieces of my life except me.”
“You were safer not knowing.”
She flinched.
“Don't.”
Adrian stopped.
“Don't tell me what kept me safe. I spent seven years deciding what kept me safe.”
Dominic looked at Claire's swollen cheek.
Shame moved across his face.
For once, he had nothing to say.
Mason cleared his throat.
“We should secure the watch.”
Adrian looked at him.
“Why are you so interested in getting that watch out of the room?”
Mason’s face barely changed.
“Because it is evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Theft.”
Claire gave a bitter laugh.
“Still going with that?”
Mason's eyes moved toward her.
“For now, the watch was found in your possession.”
“No,” Adrian said. “It was found in a coat hanging in an unsecured employee room after your people had already searched the woman wearing it.”
Mason turned to Dominic.
“Mr. Rainer?”
Dominic said nothing.
That silence was new.
For the first time that night, Dominic was looking at his own people with suspicion.
Claire opened her palm.
Her mother's earring rested there.
Something about the photograph bothered her.
She lifted it.
“Wait.”
On the picture, Margaret wore the earring with the small teardrop stone facing forward.
Claire looked down at hers.
The clasp was thicker than she remembered.
She had never noticed.
Her mother had always handled old jewelry carefully. She had warned Claire never to replace the backs because “old things survive when you leave them alone.”
Claire had assumed it was one of Margaret's strange little sayings.
Now she wasn't so sure.
She twisted the clasp.
Nothing.
She tried again.
A tiny silver cap loosened.
Adrian stepped closer.
“Claire.”
“I see it.”
Inside the hollow clasp sat a narrow brass strip no longer than a fingernail.
Claire pulled it free.
Stamped into the metal were two words.
MARLOWE 418.
Dominic stared.
“Marlowe?”
Claire looked around them.
“The club.”
Adrian took a slow breath.
“Locker number.”
Mason spoke too quickly.
“There are no numbered lockers above one hundred.”
Claire turned toward him.
“How do you know?”
“Because I reviewed the staff facilities.”
Adrian's gaze sharpened.
“The strip doesn't say staff.”
Dominic suddenly looked toward Arthur Bell, the sixty-eight-year-old general manager who had spent most of the evening pretending he wanted to disappear through the marble floor.
“Arthur.”
Arthur swallowed.
“Yes, sir?”
“Does 418 mean anything to you?”
Arthur glanced around the ballroom.
“Not anymore.”
Dominic’s expression changed.
“What does that mean?”
Arthur removed his glasses.
“My father managed this club before me. The original members had private deposit drawers upstairs. Small valuables. Letters. Cash. Jewelry. Whatever they didn't want carried around Manhattan.”
“How many?”
“Five hundred.”
Claire felt Adrian look at her.
Dominic asked, “Do they still exist?”
“The drawers do. The service was discontinued twenty years ago.”
“Why?”
Arthur hesitated.
“After Mrs. Rainer died.”
The words silenced everyone.
Dominic stepped toward him.
“You knew my mother?”
“Everyone here knew your mother.”
“You never told me she kept a drawer.”
Arthur frowned.
“She didn't.”
Claire already knew the answer before he said it.
Arthur looked at her.
“Margaret Bennett did.”
Claire's knees nearly gave out.
Adrian caught her elbow.
She pulled away instinctively.
Not because she hated the touch.
Because she remembered it too well.
Dominic noticed.
Adrian let his hand fall.
Arthur led them upstairs.
The ballroom guests remained below, but whispers followed them all the way to the second floor.
Claire, Dominic, Adrian, Mason, and Arthur entered an old administrative corridor lined with framed photographs of senators, actors, judges, businessmen and smiling couples whose names appeared on buildings.
At the end stood a walnut cabinet built into the wall.
Arthur unlocked its outer doors.
Hundreds of narrow brass drawers appeared.
Dominic found 418.
“What opens it?”
Claire held up the brass strip.
Arthur shook his head.
“That isn't a key.”
Adrian examined it.
“No. It's a tag.”
Claire stared at her earring.
Then at the tiny hollow clasp.
She slid the brass strip back inside.
The end now protruded like a narrow blade.
Arthur blinked.
“Well.”
Claire inserted it into drawer 418.
The lock turned.
For seven years, she had worn the key.
The drawer opened with a dry metallic sound.
Inside sat a cream silk scarf, a faded train ticket, a thin red appointment book, and one more silver earring.
The matching earring.
Claire reached for it with trembling fingers.
Beneath it was a child’s drawing.
Crayon.
Folded twice.
She opened it.
A little girl stood between two women beneath a yellow sun.
One woman had brown hair.
MOM.
The other wore red.
MISS CELESTE.
Claire stopped breathing.
“I drew this.”
Dominic stared at her.
“You knew my mother?”
“I was maybe eight.”
Memory returned in fragments.
A woman in a red coat giving her hot chocolate.
Her mother laughing more freely than Claire had ever heard her laugh.
A beautiful room with tall windows.
Claire pressed a hand to her forehead.
“I thought she was one of Mom's friends from work.”
Dominic sat down hard in a nearby chair.
For eighteen years, he had believed his mother kept her private life separate from employees.
Apparently, she had kept an entire friendship from him.
Adrian opened the red appointment book.
Numbers filled the pages.
Dates.
Initials.
Amounts.
Dominic leaned closer.
His face changed.
“These are transfers.”
“To whom?” Claire asked.
“My family's companies.”
He turned several pages.
“Cross companies too.”
Adrian took the book.
His eyes hardened.
Claire watched him.
“What?”
Adrian pointed to one set of initials.
“T.C.”
Dominic whispered, “Thomas Cross.”
Claire knew the name.
Adrian's father.
A man dead for almost sixteen years.
Dominic looked at Adrian.
“My mother was moving money with your father.”
Adrian’s mouth tightened.
“Or tracking money they were trying to recover.”
“From whom?”
Nobody answered.
Then Claire noticed another object stuck behind the child’s drawing.
A photograph.
Newer than the first.
Seven years old.
She pulled it free.
Her heart stopped.
Adrian stood outside a Manhattan restaurant, shaking hands with Julian Rainer—Dominic’s uncle and the man who had taken control of the Rainer businesses after Celeste died.
The photograph was dated.
Claire recognized the date immediately.
It was the night before she left Adrian.
On the back, in her mother's handwriting, were six words.
CLAIRE MUST NEVER KNOW THIS MEETING.
May you like
Claire looked up at Adrian.
“What did you do?”
