Chương 4
Helena accepted that without visible offense.
“You’re right to be cautious.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
The waitress arrived with another mug and looked between them.
“Coffee?”
Clara shook her head.
The waitress filled Helena’s cup without asking. Helena waited until she left, then sat beside Clara.
Lila folded a paper sugar packet into smaller and smaller rectangles.
“They called me into Victor’s office,” she said. “David Morrow was there from legal. He asked whether I placed financial records under the piano bench. I said no.”
Clara looked at her.
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
The words landed awkwardly.
Clara had assumed Lila left the copies for her. The handwriting beside the figures looked like hers.
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your note was on one page.”
“I wrote that note in February. On the original.”
Helena set both hands around the untouched coffee.
“Who had access to the originals?”
“Payroll. Banquet management. Victor. Ms. Hale’s office, maybe.”
“Did you tell anyone you spoke to Clara about the service charges?”
Lila looked down.
“Evan.”
“Who is Evan?” Clara asked.
“My boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, probably. He works night security.”
Helena’s gaze shifted toward Marcus. He gave no visible response.
“Did Evan know you planned to report the missing distributions?” Helena asked.
“I didn’t plan anything. I complained to payroll. Then I complained to the union organizer, but we’re not union. Not yet. I told Clara because she asked why everyone was angry.”
Clara remembered the service corridor, Lila struggling to open a packet of peanut butter with her teeth.
“Did Evan have access to the footage?” Helena asked.
“Some of it.”
“Could he access payroll records?”
“No.”
“What reason would he have to place copies under the piano?”
Lila’s folded sugar packet tore between her fingers.
“We fought yesterday. He said I was going to get both of us fired.”
The diner door opened. Everyone looked up.
A man in a delivery uniform entered carrying a motorcycle helmet. Marcus watched him choose a stool at the counter, then returned his attention to the window.
Lila rubbed the torn paper between her palms.
“Victor asked me to sign a statement saying Clara took the records from an unattended office,” she said. “He said if I signed, I could keep my health insurance through the end of the month.”
Clara’s stomach tightened.
Lila’s younger brother had diabetes. She had mentioned once that he used her address and sometimes her insurance paperwork, although Clara never understood the arrangement.
“Did you sign?” Clara asked.
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Helena noticed. Clara could tell from the way her mother’s eyes rested on Lila’s hands instead of her face.
Lila noticed Helena noticing.
“I signed the first page,” she said. “Then I read the second page and stopped.”
“What was on the second?” Helena asked.
“That I saw Clara enter the banquet office. I never saw that.”
“Do you have a copy?”
“They wouldn’t give me one.”
“Did you photograph it?”
“No. They took my phone before the meeting.”
Clara turned toward Helena.
“Can they do that?”
“They can ask an employee to leave a personal device outside a confidential meeting. Whether the rest was lawful depends on facts we don’t have yet.”
Lila gave Helena a bitter smile.
“You sound exactly like David.”
“That doesn’t make the answer less true.”
Clara expected Lila to become angry. Instead, she laughed, a small, exhausted sound.
“Fantastic. Everybody is careful except the people who can afford not to be.”
Her phone vibrated on the table.
The screen showed Evan’s name.
Lila watched it ring without answering.
When it stopped, a message appeared.
We need to talk before this gets worse.
Helena asked, “May I see that?”
“No.”
“Don’t delete it.”
“I know how phones work.”
“I’m not suggesting you don’t.”
“You suggest things like you’re putting tape around a crime scene.”
Clara looked at Helena.
“She does.”
For one brief moment, Lila’s mouth moved as if she might smile. Then she covered her face with both hands.
“I need my job.”
Clara reached across the table but stopped before touching her.
“I’m sorry.”
Lila lowered her hands.
“Did you tell Victor I showed you anything?”
“No.”
“Did your mother?”
“I didn’t know Ms. Santos’s identity until five minutes ago,” Helena said.
Lila looked toward Marcus.
“And him?”
“Marcus is not part of the investigative team.”
“What is he, then?”
Marcus answered from the other table.
“Someone who makes it harder for people to scare witnesses in parking lots.”
His tea arrived. He thanked the waitress and added honey with surprising care.
Lila watched him stir it.
“Is that happening?”
“It happened to another former employee,” Helena said.
The diner’s refrigerator compressor clicked off. In the sudden quiet, the traffic outside seemed louder.
Clara thought of the two managers outside Lila’s apartment.
“You’re not going home alone,” she said.
Lila stared at the ruined sugar packet.
“I can’t stay with you. Your apartment is the size of a closet.”
“It’s a large closet.”
“Your radiator screams.”
“It expresses itself.”
The weak joke sat between them. Lila gave in first, pressing her lips together to stop a laugh that became a sob. She turned toward the window until it passed.
Helena reached into her handbag and placed a business card on the table.
“My firm can arrange a hotel room under a protected witness protocol while outside counsel reviews what happened.”
Lila looked at the card.
“At another Hale hotel?”
“No.”
“Will I owe somebody?”
“No.”
“Will you interview me?”
“Not if you don’t consent. The new investigator will explain your options.”
“Who’s the new investigator?”
“I don’t know yet. I recused myself.”
Lila looked from Helena to Clara.
“Because she’s your daughter.”
“Yes.”
“And you came anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that also a conflict?”
Helena’s fingers tightened around the coffee mug.
“Yes.”
May you like
Clara looked at her. Helena did not soften the admission or decorate it with justification.
Marcus drove Lila to a small hotel near the courthouse where Helena’s firm kept rooms for threatened witnesses. Clara went with them to make sure the reservation existed. Helena stayed in the lobby while Clara accompanied Lila upstairs.
