Chương 3
Claire’s name became a noun before sunset.
By six, strangers were calling her a predator, a nurse with no medical training, a failed actress, an escort, and a woman who had waited too long to trap a rich man. Someone claimed she had been married twice. She had never been married. Someone else posted that Walter had met her at a rehabilitation center after a stroke. They had met during a hotel reopening in Philadelphia while arguing about imported marble.
The truth was less interesting than the shape people needed.
Naomi Pike called at six twenty-three.
“Do not post anything,” she said without greeting.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Do not respond to messages. Do not correct small errors. Do not threaten anyone. Do not send the files we discussed to another person.”
“They’re already with you.”
“Copies are with me. Where is the original drive?”
“In my apartment.”
“Is anyone there?”
“No.”
“Who has keys?”
“Walter. My mother. The building manager.”
“Change the lock authorization with management. Tonight.”
Claire looked toward her parents’ kitchen. Her father was opening and closing cabinets as if he had forgotten where they kept glasses. Her mother sat at the table answering only calls from immediate family.
“Do you think Simon knows?”
“I think a man like Simon always knows when somebody has stepped near the edge of his shadow.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the most accurate one I have.”
Naomi had the deliberate voice of someone who had learned to make impatience sound expensive. She was sixty-one, with cropped black hair going silver at the temples and a habit of pausing before names she did not respect. Claire had met her only once before contacting her, at a foundation dinner where Naomi spent most of the evening listening to Walter complain that retirement was a word invented by sons who wanted office furniture.
“Did Walter call you?” Claire asked.
“No.”
“Will he?”
“Not tonight.”
“You sound certain.”
“I worked for him for fourteen years. When Walter is ashamed, he becomes extremely busy proving he is right.”
Claire pressed her thumb against the pale mark where her ring had been. “He didn’t look ashamed.”
“Walter never looks like the first thing he feels.”
“What should I do?”
“Go to your apartment with your father. Retrieve the drive, your laptop, the paper notes, and any device you used. Touch nothing else. Then bring them to my office.”
“Tonight?”
“Especially tonight.”
The drive was gone.
Claire knew before she finished opening the drawer. The small blue case had been positioned behind a packet of passport photos and an expired subway card, beneath a stack of old receipts she kept promising to sort. The receipts were still there. So were the passport photos. The drive was not.
Her father stood in the bedroom doorway, holding the apartment’s fire extinguisher because he had refused to come unarmed and had rejected Claire’s observation that a kitchen knife would only make the situation worse.
“Are you sure that’s where you put it?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been through a wedding.”
“I’m sure.”
“Could you have moved it?”
“No.”
“You move things when you’re nervous.”
“I move salt shakers. I don’t relocate evidence.”
Martin set the fire extinguisher on the floor. “Don’t call it evidence until we know what it is.”
“That sounds like Walter.”
“Maybe Walter has managed to be wrong in one room and right in another.”
Claire shut the drawer harder than she intended.
The apartment showed no damage. The lock had not been forced. Her laptop remained on the desk. Two bracelets lay in an open jewelry dish. A hundred and eighty dollars in emergency cash was still inside a winter boot.
Whoever took the drive had known what they wanted.
Claire checked the hall closet, the kitchen junk drawer, the pockets of three coats, the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink, and the box where she kept old tax documents. Her father followed, saying less each time she opened another place.
At last he sat on the arm of her sofa. “Walter has a key.”
“He wouldn’t steal it.”
“He just announced an ambush at your wedding.”
“That isn’t the same as breaking into my apartment.”
“No, it’s a different terrible decision.”
“He didn’t know about the drive.”
“You hope.”
Claire found herself defending Walter because her father had accused him of something worse than the thing she already knew he had done. It made no sense, but little about the day did.
She called building management. The weekend supervisor reviewed the electronic access record and told her that her unit had been opened at 3:14 that afternoon with a registered guest key.
“Whose?” Claire asked.
“The credential is assigned to Mr. Mercer.”
Her father looked at her from across the room.
Walter had been in the ballroom at 3:14, taking photographs with donors before the ceremony.
Someone had used his key.
Claire asked whether the hallway camera recorded the visitor. The supervisor became cautious.
“I can preserve footage,” he said. “I can’t release it without management approval or a request from law enforcement.”
“Preserve it.”
“I can note the request.”
“Don’t note it. Preserve it.”
A pause.
“I’ll contact my manager.”
Naomi arrived twenty minutes later, wearing flat shoes and a navy coat over clothes that suggested she had left dinner before dessert. She did not touch the drawer. She photographed it, then the apartment door, then the laptop desk.
“Who knew where the drive was?” she asked.
“No one.”
“Who knew it existed?”
“You. Me.”
“Did you mention it to Walter?”
“No.”
“Simon?”
“No.”
“Your parents?”
“Tonight.”
Martin lifted both hands. “I’ve been with her since the ballroom.”
Naomi looked at him. “I wasn’t accusing you.”
“You were making a list.”
“Lists are how adults avoid accusing people too early.”
Claire told her about the access record.
Naomi’s mouth tightened. “Walter’s key may have been copied, reassigned, or used by someone with access to his key ring.”
May you like
“Simon’s staff manages his residences,” Claire said.
“Simon’s staff manages too much.”
