Chapter 3 - The Waitress They Chose
Maeve did not understand.
“Why would anyone pay Carmichael for me?”
Arthur asked Sal to leave.
Sal hesitated.
That frightened Maeve.
Arthur Romano was clearly accustomed to being obeyed immediately.
Yet Sal looked at Maeve, then back at Arthur, as though silently asking whether Arthur was certain.
Finally, he left.
Arthur closed the door.
“Your father was Patrick Nolan.”
Maeve’s face changed.
“You investigated me.”
“I investigate everyone near me.”
“You’ve known me twelve hours.”
“Which is eleven hours longer than necessary.”
“My father was a city accountant.”
“He was a forensic accountant.”
Maeve frowned.
“He worked for the comptroller.”
“He worked for several people.”
Arthur removed the tiny brass key from the table.
“One of them was my father.”
Maeve laughed in disbelief.
“My father hated people like you.”
“He hated people like my father too.”
“Then why work for him?”
“Because twenty-two years ago, Patrick Nolan discovered money moving through six construction companies. Millions disappeared from pension funds and city contracts.”
Maeve remembered her father sitting at their kitchen table late at night, surrounded by documents.
She had been eleven.
He always closed the folders when she entered.
Three months later, he died when his car went through a guardrail.
Police called it an accident.
Maeve’s mother never believed them.
Neither had Maeve.
Arthur continued.
“Your father copied everything.”
Maeve stopped breathing.
“He was going to testify.”
“Yes.”
“Against your family?”
“Against everyone.”
“Including your father?”
“Yes.”
She slapped Arthur.
The sound cracked through the room.
Caesar stood instantly.
Arthur did not move.
Maeve’s eyes filled.
“You knew.”
“I learned years later.”
“My mother spent the rest of her life wondering whether he fell asleep driving.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
Her voice broke.
“Men like you don’t get to say that after building lives on other people’s funerals.”
Arthur accepted the words without defending himself.
That somehow made her angrier.
She walked toward the door.
Arthur said, “Carmichael wasn’t paid to watch you because of me.”
Maeve stopped.
“He’s been reporting on you for years.”
She slowly turned.
Arthur placed photographs across the desk.
Maeve leaving work.
Maeve buying groceries.
Maeve visiting her mother’s grave.
Maeve entering her apartment.
Some photographs were nearly a decade old.
Her stomach turned.
“Who took these?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Why?”
“Because your father hid something before he died.”
Arthur lifted the brass key.
“And someone believes you can lead them to it.”
Maeve stared at the key.
“My father never gave me anything.”
“Maybe he gave Caesar’s original owner something.”
“Your brother?”
Arthur nodded.
His younger brother, Daniel, had been seventeen when Patrick Nolan died. Years later, Daniel found references to Nolan’s evidence while trying to clean up the Romano businesses.
Daniel had died eighteen months earlier.
Officially, a robbery.
Arthur clearly believed otherwise.
“Caesar was Daniel’s dog,” Arthur said.
Maeve looked toward the hallway.
“And Daniel put the key on him?”
“I’ve never seen it before.”
“Then why didn’t whoever kidnapped you find it?”
“They removed Caesar’s outer collar. Daniel trained him with two. The inner leather band disappears under his coat.”
Maeve sat down.
Her ordinary life suddenly felt artificial.
The diner.
Her apartment.
Carmichael.
Someone had been watching from the edges of all of it.
“What does the key open?”
Arthur looked at her.
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
They started with Patrick Nolan’s belongings.
Maeve had stored three boxes after her mother’s death in a rented unit across town.
Arthur insisted on security.
Maeve insisted that six armed men following her into a storage facility was not subtle.
They compromised at two.
Inside the dusty unit, Maeve opened boxes she had avoided for years.
Christmas decorations.
Her mother’s recipe cards.
Her father’s baseball glove.
An old photograph showed Patrick holding eleven-year-old Maeve on his shoulders.
Arthur picked it up.
“You look like him.”
“You never met him.”
“I did.”
Maeve turned sharply.
Arthur was staring at the photograph.
“I was sixteen. My father brought me to his office once. Patrick told him he was a coward.”
Maeve almost smiled.
“That sounds like Dad.”
Arthur looked at her.
“He said something else.”
“What?”
“That children shouldn’t inherit their fathers’ sins.”
The words settled between them.
Arthur placed the photograph carefully back into the box.
At the bottom, Maeve discovered an old cookbook.
Her mother had never cooked from recipes.
Inside the cover was a handwritten line.
Maeve—when the dog comes home, remember where you learned to swim.
Her heart slammed.
Arthur read it.
“Where did you learn?”
“Lake Mercer.”
They drove there before sunset.
Maeve’s family had once rented a tiny cabin every summer.
The property had been abandoned for years.
Behind the cabin stood the remains of an old boathouse.
Maeve walked to the wooden post where her father had measured her height every summer.
There were pencil marks beneath peeling paint.
Age seven.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
Eleven.
Beside the last mark was a tiny carved V.
Arthur handed her the brass key.
A hidden keyhole sat beneath the board.
Maeve inserted it.
Something clicked.
A narrow compartment opened.
Inside was a waterproof metal box.
Maeve lifted it with shaking hands.
Arthur stood behind her.
She opened the lid.
Documents.
Photographs.
A cassette tape.
And a letter.
On the envelope, in her father’s handwriting:
FOR MY DAUGHTER.
Maeve opened it.
She read the first paragraph.
Then stopped.
Arthur saw the blood drain from her face.
“What?”
Maeve handed him the page.
Patrick Nolan had written only six sentences.
The last one changed everything.
If anything happens to me, do not trust the police. Do not trust the mayor. And above all, do not trust the man named Salvatore Greco.
Arthur stared at the name.
Behind them, outside the boathouse, a twig snapped.
Caesar growled.
May you like
And Sal’s voice came through the darkness.
“Arthur?”
