Chương 6
Peter stared at her.
She had imagined telling him gently. She had prepared figures and payment schedules. Instead the truth lay between them with the letter and the cassette.
“How much?” he asked.
“Twelve thousand by the fourteenth. Then another twenty-eight by the end of the month.”
“You said the holiday accounts covered December.”
“They did. They didn’t cover the roof, the mixer, your hospital deductible, and three months of ingredients.”
“You should have told me.”
The hypocrisy was so complete that for a moment Mara could only look at him.
Rocco turned toward the window again.
Peter’s face sagged. “We’ll sell the delivery van.”
“It’s worth fifteen hundred dollars.”
“The second oven.”
“It hasn’t worked since March.”
“The building—”
“Has two liens.”
Peter rubbed the blanket between his fingers. “I can go back tomorrow.”
“You have a concussion.”
“I can sit at the register.”
“You fell because a man attacked you.”
“I did not fall.”
“You just admitted it.”
“I can still sit.”
Mara lowered her voice. “This is what you do. You hide something until it becomes everyone else’s emergency.”
Peter looked toward Rocco. “I’m sorry.”
Rocco answered without turning. “She wasn’t talking to me.”
A knock sounded.
A nurse entered to check Peter’s blood pressure. She glanced at the papers on the tray, at Rocco’s wet clothing, and at Mara’s expression, then asked whether she should return later.
“No,” Peter said. “Apparently later is how we ruin things.”
The nurse wrapped the cuff around his arm. No one spoke while the machine hummed.
Mara watched a maintenance worker clean rain from the hallway floor. He moved the yellow caution sign three times because visitors kept walking around it. A television in another room played a game show, followed by applause too cheerful for the corridor.
Ordinary sounds continued. That seemed unfair.
When the nurse left, Rocco placed Ray’s letter inside the envelope and slid the photograph after it. He kept the key and cassette.
Mara said, “Those belong to my father.”
“They were addressed to me.”
“The affidavit belongs to him.”
“He can keep his confession.”
Peter winced.
Rocco added, “We go to the bank.”
“It’s almost eleven,” Mara said. “I need identification and paperwork to access the box.”
“You have them?”
“At home.”
“Get them.”
“You don’t give orders well enough to make me enjoy obeying.”
“I’m not asking you to enjoy it.”
Peter said, “Mara, go.”
She looked at him. “You don’t get to tell me that either.”
His mouth tightened with something close to pride, which only irritated her further.
Rocco rolled toward the door.
Mara followed him into the hall. “You’re not leaving with the cassette.”
He stopped beside a vending machine.
“You think I’ll steal it?” he asked.
“I think somebody hit my father looking for it.”
“And you want to keep it in a bakery with a broken camera?”
“I want to make a copy.”
“Of a twenty-three-year-old damaged tape?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
Mara knew one person in Cedar Hollow who repaired old audio equipment: her former fiancé, who had left town two weeks before their wedding and returned four years later with a wife, a child, and a business restoring church organs and analog recording equipment.
She hated that this was useful.
“I know someone,” she said.
“Do you trust him?”
“No.”
“That’s a poor recommendation.”
“He’s careful with fragile things. Just not people.”
Rocco studied her face. “How long?”
“An hour, if he’s at the workshop.”
“We go together.”
“Of course we do.”
He wheeled toward the elevator. Mara pressed the button.
After a moment he said, “I’m sorry about your bakery.”
She looked at him.
He kept his gaze on the elevator doors. “I heard what your father said. It wasn’t my business.”
“No. It’s the bank’s.”
The elevator arrived.
Inside, Rocco positioned his chair facing the door. Mara stood beside him, close enough to smell rain, coffee, and the medicinal soap from the towel.
“Did you know Victor wanted you dead?” she asked.
“Ray told me someone did.”
“Not who?”
“He said names made children careless.”
“That sounds like him?”
“It sounds exactly like him.”
“And you believed him?”
“I was eleven. He dragged me out of bed, put me in the trunk of a bakery van, and told me my uncle had sent men to drown me. Belief wasn’t the first problem.”
“What was?”
“Breathing under six bags of flour.”
The elevator doors opened.
He rolled out before she could answer.
By noon, the video had passed three hundred thousand views.
Mara learned this from Owen Pike, who was waiting beside her van at the hospital entrance. He wore a rain jacket over work clothes and held his phone like evidence.
“You need to call me,” he said.
“I didn’t know I did.”
“Your camera account was accessed remotely at nine-twelve.”
Rocco stopped halfway down the ramp. “By whom?”
Owen looked at him. “You’re the guy.”
“He’s Rocco.”
“Right.” Owen glanced at the wheelchair, then away too quickly. “I’m Owen.”
“Who accessed the account?”
“Administrator login. I reset it.”
“You’re the administrator?”
“I installed it.”
“So you erased the footage.”
“No.”
“You had access.”
“So did Mara.”
Mara said, “I was in the kitchen at nine-twelve.”
Owen’s face reddened. “The system log shows a reset from my office IP, but I wasn’t there. I was at Cedar Elementary fixing their fire panel.”
“Who else uses your office?” Rocco asked.
“My assistant.”
“Name.”
“Dylan. But he’s in Vermont.”
“Who has a key?”
Owen rubbed his jaw. “My wife. My brother. Two subcontractors.”
“And Samuel Vale?” Mara asked.
Owen’s head lifted.
Rocco noticed. “Which Vale?”
“Celeste’s father,” Mara said. “Adrian.”
Owen shoved his free hand into his pocket. “Adrian invested in the company when I started.”
“How much?”
“That has nothing to do with—”
“How much?” Rocco repeated.
“Forty thousand.”
Mara stared at him. Owen had spent years telling everyone he built Pike Security from the ground up.
May you like
“He has administrator access?” she asked.
“He has financial access. Not technical.”
