Chapter 5 - THE FORTY-DOLLAR RECEIPT
“Then we're calling the police before we go anywhere.”
Eveina took the photograph from Margaret's hand.
Alistair looked at her.
“I can have the building watched.”
“You had my son's school watched by a man pretending to be you. Forgive me if that doesn't make me feel better.”
He accepted the criticism.
She contacted Detective Alvarez again.
The detective listened carefully, then gave instructions.
Nobody was to enter the apartment.
Nobody was to confront an unknown person.
She would meet them outside the building and arrange for officers to check it.
Alistair wanted to object to involving police in his private affairs.
Six years ago, he probably would have.
But Eveina was standing in front of him, holding a photograph of the home where she'd raised his son.
For once, his pride wasn't the most important thing in the room.
“Do what she says,” he told the others.
They waited until Alvarez confirmed the building was clear.
Theo remained at the townhouse with Lena, with Helena nearby but no responsibility for his care. Samuel surrendered his keys and stayed as well.
Before leaving, Eveina knelt beside her son.
“I'm going home to get a few things.”
Theo looked worried.
“Are we moving again?”
She felt the question like a needle beneath her skin.
They'd moved four times in six years.
Always to apartments she could afford.
Always with the same explanation.
Somewhere better, baby.
Somewhere we can stay.
“I don't know yet,” she admitted.
Theo held her hand.
“Can you bring Mr. Buttons?”
His stuffed rabbit.
The one with one brown button eye and a crooked ear.
“Of course.”
He glanced toward Alistair.
“Can he help?”
Eveina looked at the man standing behind her.
“Yes, sweetheart. He can help.”
Alistair turned his face away for a moment.
It was the first time she'd allowed him to be useful to their child.
And somehow, it meant more than all the power he possessed.
They arrived at Eveina's apartment shortly after ten.
Detective Alvarez stood beside an unmarked police car.
She was a woman in her forties with short dark hair and the practical expression of someone who had little patience for excuses.
She studied Alistair.
“I know who you are.”
“I assumed you would.”
“That doesn't put you in charge here.”
“Good,” Eveina said.
Alistair almost smiled.
Alvarez showed them photographs officers had taken inside.
A closet door was open.
Two drawers had been searched.
Nothing obvious was missing.
But Eveina knew someone had been there.
She always kept Theo's winter sweaters folded in the top drawer.
Now they were scattered across the bed.
Her face tightened.
“Someone touched his clothes.”
Alistair stepped beside her.
“I'll replace everything.”
She turned on him.
“That's not the point.”
He stopped.
“You're right.”
Eveina looked surprised.
He glanced at the little blue sweater lying on the mattress.
“Someone came into the place where my son sleeps. I can't buy that away.”
For a long moment, she couldn't answer.
Then she walked to the hall closet.
Behind a vacuum cleaner sat a battered plastic storage box.
It had followed her from Chicago to Indianapolis, then back to Chicago.
She'd nearly thrown it away a dozen times.
Inside were nursing school notebooks.
An old photograph of her mother.
Theo's hospital bracelet.
And a folded black wool coat.
Alistair stared at it.
“I remember that.”
Eveina lifted the coat.
“You left without it.”
“I was supposed to come back the next morning.”
“You didn't.”
“I know.”
She unfolded the sleeves.
The fabric still showed faint marks from the blood that had soaked into it years earlier.
Along the left side was a crooked row of dark stitches.
Eveina touched them.
“I repaired the pocket while you were sleeping. I didn't have matching thread.”
Alistair remembered waking to find her sitting beside the window with a sewing kit.
She'd been so tired that her head kept nodding.
He'd asked what he owed her.
Forty dollars, she'd answered.
Not because the work was worth forty dollars.
Because she needed forty dollars for an overdue electricity bill.
He'd given her two twenties.
She'd written him a receipt on a torn piece of notebook paper.
He still kept that receipt in his desk.
Eveina ran her fingers along the lining.
“There was something hard here. I thought it was part of the coat.”
Alistair leaned closer.
“What did you do?”
“I sewed over it.”
He looked at her.
“You sewed something into the pocket?”
“I was nineteen, exhausted, and trying to keep a wounded man alive. I wasn't thinking about hidden compartments.”
Alvarez approached.
“Don't cut anything yet. If it's evidence, I want it documented.”
An officer photographed the coat.
Then Eveina, wearing gloves provided by the detective, carefully loosened the old stitches while Alvarez watched.
Something metallic slipped into the opening.
A small brass tag.
Stamped with the number 417.
Behind it was a folded piece of paper wrapped in thin plastic.
Alistair recognized the handwriting before the paper was opened.
His father's.
His father had died eight years earlier.
But for the final two years of his life, he'd been investigating unusual payments made through the family shipping company.
Alistair had inherited the investigation without realizing how dangerous it was.
The paper contained a short list.
Dates.
Warehouse numbers.
Payments.
And initials.
G.V.
Gideon Vale.
Alistair looked toward Alvarez.
“That is why I was shot.”
Eveina stared at him.
“Explain.”
“Two days before I met you, I found money missing from a river transport account. Gideon told me it was a bookkeeping problem. I didn't believe him.”
He pointed to the paper.
“My father had been watching those accounts before he died.”
“Why would you carry that around?”
“I was supposed to meet an accountant who'd agreed to verify the records. He never showed up.”
“And then someone attacked you.”
Alistair nodded.
He remembered the street.
The sudden headlights.
A man stepping from behind a parked truck.
He'd never seen the shooter's face.
“I thought a rival family had learned about the meeting.”
Alvarez examined the list.
“This could establish a reason for someone to want you stopped. But it doesn't prove who ordered the attack.”
“I know.”
Eveina looked at the old coat.
Six years of grief.
Six years of hiding.
And the answer might have been folded beneath a seam she'd sewn because she didn't want Alistair to be cold.
Alistair touched the fabric.
“You kept it.”
She looked away.
“I couldn't throw it out.”
“Why?”
Her eyes filled.
“Because it was the only thing you left behind that didn't tell me I was unwanted.”
He went very still.
“Eve…”
She shook her head.
“Not now.”
Alvarez carefully collected the paper and brass tag for examination, documenting where they'd been found.
Then she looked at the old notes in Eveina's storage box.
“Did you keep any record of treating his wound?”
Eveina nodded.
“Only my personal notes. I wasn't working in a clinic then.”
She found a small spiral notebook.
On one page was a rough sketch of his injury.
Beside it were the words:
Male. Approx. 30. Gunshot wound. Heavy bleeding. Conscious. Refused hospital.
Below that:
4:41 a.m. Patient stabilized.
Alistair smiled sadly.
“You wrote all that down?”
“I was studying for an exam.”
“You nearly saved my life and studied for an exam?”
“I had an exam the next day.”
His smile disappeared.
Because he remembered one more thing.
A second man had been standing beside the truck during the attack.
He'd been holding something shiny.
Not a gun.
A watch.
With a broad silver case.
Alistair turned toward Alvarez.
“Can you show me the brass tag again?”
She held up the evidence bag.
He studied the number.
417\.
Then he remembered.
The accountant he'd been supposed to meet had rented a storage locker near the river.
Number 417.
He had given Alistair the tag before the planned meeting, with instructions to collect the records if anything went wrong.
But Alistair had never made it to the locker.
For six years, he had forgotten about it.
Alvarez asked for the address.
Alistair provided the old warehouse location.
Then Eveina noticed something written beneath the number on the paper.
Three words, almost too faint to read.
If I disappear.
Below them was one final instruction in his father's handwriting.
DO NOT TRUST GIDEON.
Alistair stared at the note.
His father had tried to warn him.
The woman he'd lost had unknowingly protected the warning.
And the man who'd stood beside him at his father's grave had spent six years making sure neither of them discovered it.
Then Alvarez checked the address against the records available to her.
Her expression changed.
“The warehouse is scheduled for demolition Monday.”
Alistair looked up.
“Who ordered it?”
She turned the screen toward him.
The permit applicant was a security company.
May you like
Its registered director was Gideon Vale.
And the demolition crew was scheduled to begin stripping the building at six o'clock the following morning.
