Chương 5
The room was clean and narrow, with gray carpeting and a framed photograph of a bridge. Lila checked the closet, the shower, and the lock on the connecting door. Then she sat on the bed and took off her shoes.
Her left heel was blistered.
“I’m not brave,” she said.
Clara placed a paper cup of ice on the desk.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“People always say that when they want you to do something dangerous.”
Clara opened the small sewing kit from the bathroom and found a bandage.
Lila watched her.
“Are you going to help your mother investigate?”
“No.”
“That was fast.”
“I know her.”
“You haven’t talked to her in years.”
“Exactly.”
Lila peeled the backing from the bandage.
“She walked into that ballroom like she owned the building.”
“She walks into grocery stores that way.”
“I would like that for one day.”
“No, you wouldn’t. It makes every conversation feel like testimony.”
Lila covered the blister and flexed her foot.
“Victor was afraid of her.”
“He’s afraid of what she can prove.”
“Same thing.”
Clara looked at the bridge photograph. The water had been printed too blue.
“Not to her.”
When Clara returned to the lobby, Helena sat in a low chair beneath a lamp, reading something on her phone. Her ivory jacket was folded over the chair beside her. Without it, in a sleeveless silk blouse, she looked less armored and more tired.
Marcus stood near the revolving door speaking quietly to the front desk manager.
Clara sat across from Helena.
“Lila’s staying.”
“I know.”
“You arranged for a guard?”
“Marcus arranged periodic checks. A visible guard could draw attention.”
Clara nodded.
For several seconds, neither spoke. A vending machine near the elevators dropped a bottle with a dull thud. A teenage boy retrieved it and walked away staring at the screen of his phone.
Helena put her own phone facedown.
“What happened before I entered the ballroom?”
Clara looked toward the entrance.
“You’re recused.”
“I’m asking as your mother.”
“You don’t know how to do that.”
“No.”
The answer came without defense.
Clara rubbed one thumb against the edge of her pearl earring.
She told Helena about finding the copies beneath the piano lid after returning from a break. She had read enough to recognize the missing distributions Lila described. Victor entered while she was holding them. He accused her of searching hotel property. Clara said the records appeared to show theft from workers. Beatrice arrived during the argument.
Victor demanded that Clara apologize.
When she refused, he threatened Lila, her contract, and every future booking connected to the Hale family. He told her that performers survived by being pleasant. Then he pointed at the floor in front of Beatrice’s chair.
Clara had not intended to kneel.
Her knees bent anyway.
“I thought I could do it for one second,” she said. “Say something vague, get out, warn Lila. I told myself it was practical.”
Helena listened without interrupting.
“But when I was down there,” Clara continued, “he put his hand on me, and I couldn’t make my mouth work. I kept thinking about all the rooms where I’d played while people ate. How easy it would be for them to believe I was unstable. Musicians are allowed to be decorative or difficult. Nothing in between.”
“You were frightened.”
“I was calculating.”
“Those can happen together.”
Clara looked at her.
“Is that what you told yourself when you reported Dad?”
The lobby continued around them. Someone rolled a suitcase over the tile. The desk clerk answered a telephone. Marcus turned slightly, checking Helena’s face, then resumed his conversation.
Helena lifted her jacket from the chair and folded it across her lap.
“Your father asked me to alter a date in a client file,” she said.
“I know.”
“He said the money would be replaced before anyone noticed.”
“I know the official version.”
“I’m not giving you the official version.”
Clara waited.
Helena looked down at the gold buttons on her jacket.
“The night before I contacted the bar, he made pasta. He opened a bottle of wine we had been saving. You practiced in the living room because your recital was that weekend. He acted normal. I hated him for being able to act normal.”
Clara had no memory of the pasta. She remembered practicing a Bach invention while her parents spoke in the kitchen with voices too low to understand.
“He asked me to wait forty-eight hours,” Helena said. “I told him I would. At three in the morning, I found his passport missing.”
Clara’s hand fell from her earring.
“He said you surprised him with the report.”
“He came back before sunrise. He claimed he had gone for a drive. The passport was in his coat.”
“You never told me.”
“I was advised not to discuss facts during the investigation.”
“I was your daughter, not the jury.”
“I know.”
“You let me believe you wanted to destroy him.”
“I believed it was better for you to be angry with me than afraid he might leave.”
Clara stood.
“That wasn’t your decision to make.”
“No.”
“You keep saying that like it repairs something.”
“It doesn’t.”
Helena rose more slowly.
“I am telling you because Victor will use our history if he learns it. He will say I manipulated you to strengthen an investigation. He will say this is revenge against another wealthy family. He will use your father’s disciplinary record and my role in it.”
Clara’s anger shifted, not disappearing but losing its clean shape.
“How would he learn?”
“David Morrow is thorough.”
“So are you.”
“Yes.”
Marcus approached.
“The Hale legal office has called twice,” he said. “They’re requesting confirmation that all copies of the ballroom footage remain confidential.”
Helena put on her jacket.
“What did you tell them?”
“That you would respond through the assigned investigator.”
Clara’s phone rang.
Simon Lee’s name appeared again.
May you like
She answered.
Simon owned Bellweather, a narrow restaurant near the river where Clara played Thursdays and Sunday brunches. He was usually incapable of speaking without the sound of dishes behind him.
