Chương 10
“Why did you decide to testify now?” she asked.
Gabriel reached inside his shirt and pulled out a small key on a chain.
“Because the attorney sent me this before he died.”
The key was brass, ordinary, stamped with a number.
“What does it open?” Dahlia asked.
“A safe-deposit box in Boston.”
“Have you opened it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because the bank requires two keys. The attorney had the second.”
Dahlia stared at him. “That is extremely inconvenient.”
“He believed inconvenient things stayed alive.”
“What’s inside?”
“Records. Maybe.”
Wren looked at the key.
“Does Nathaniel know?”
Gabriel nodded. “He wants the box.”
“And Morrow?”
“He wants both keys destroyed.”
“Where is the attorney’s key?”
Gabriel’s gaze moved to Brutus.
The dog lay with his chin on Wren’s foot.
“No,” Wren said.
Gabriel reached toward the Saint Francis medal.
Brutus lifted his head but allowed him to unfasten it.
Gabriel turned the bent edge and pressed a thumbnail into a narrow seam. The back of the medal shifted.
Wren leaned closer.
Inside the hollow metal was a tiny brass key, no longer than her fingernail.
Dahlia sat down hard. “You have got to be kidding.”
“The attorney gave it to Morrow,” Gabriel said. “Morrow hid it in Brutus’s collar the night of the crash because police were closing in. He planned to retrieve it after I was dead.”
“How do you know?”
“I found the seam months after surgery. At first I thought it was part of the repair.”
Wren stared at the tiny key.
“That’s why the medal stayed bent.”
“It would not close correctly after we opened it.”
“And Nathaniel knows this?”
Gabriel shook his head.
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
“Because the box contains evidence against Morrow.”
“That doesn’t answer her question,” Dahlia said.
Gabriel looked toward the blank television screen.
“It may contain evidence against Nathaniel too.”
No one spoke.
Brutus nudged Wren’s hand, impatient with the medal being off his collar.
Gabriel replaced the tiny key, closed the bent back, and fastened it again.
Wren remembered Nathaniel taking the medal in the restaurant.
He had held it.
He could have opened it.
But perhaps he had never known there was anything inside.
“Why bring Brutus tonight?” she asked.
“Because Brutus refused to stay with me.”
“That is not helpful.”
Gabriel rubbed his leg. “For three days before the restaurant, Nathaniel kept moving him between properties. Brutus hates being separated when he senses trouble. Last night, he broke a gate.”
“So Nathaniel didn’t bring the medal to trigger me.”
“Maybe he did. Maybe the dog made the decision for him.”
Wren disliked how much that mattered.
Nathaniel had still used her. He had still believed Morrow might come.
But the plan was not as perfect as she had imagined. It contained an unruly dog, an angry brother, a fake matchmaker, a compromised restaurant, and a woman wearing an apron because she had been too tired to change.
Real plans, she supposed, were mostly failures that had not finished happening.
Detective Ruiz returned at dusk.
She brought sandwiches better than the ones Dahlia had made and news worse than anyone wanted.
Sergeant Doyle had requested an attorney and stopped speaking.
Restaurant footage showed Morrow entering the service corridor, but the image was blurred. His face was never visible. The black ring appeared in one frame.
Nathaniel’s bodyguard Caleb was stable.
Wren’s landlord admitted a courier had delivered the certified federal letter. He claimed someone collected it from the radiator before he could sort the mail.
“Someone inside the building?” Wren asked.
“Possibly.”
“Mr. Peloquin has cameras.”
“One was disconnected. The other recorded over itself every forty-eight hours.”
“Of course.”
Ruiz set her folder on the kitchen counter. “There is more.”
Gabriel glanced at Wren before speaking. “We should tell her about the key.”
Ruiz’s expression changed. “What key?”
Gabriel showed her.
She stared at the medal for several seconds.
Then she said something under her breath in Spanish.
Dahlia pointed. “That was my reaction.”
Ruiz photographed the medal without opening it. She called the federal prosecutor, who confirmed that the bank had notified her office after the attorney’s death. The box was frozen pending probate and investigation.
“The second key means we may access it with a warrant,” Ruiz said.
“May?” Dahlia asked.
“The bank’s attorneys will object. The attorney represented multiple clients. The contents may be privileged.”
“He’s dead,” Dahlia said.
“His clients are not.”
“What if the contents prove someone tried to murder Gabriel?”
“Then we spend several days arguing about how we learned that.”
Dahlia looked offended by procedure itself.
Gabriel asked, “How quickly will Morrow learn you have the key?”
Ruiz gave him a tired look. “He may already know.”
The apartment intercom rang.
Everyone froze.
Brutus rose.
Ruiz drew her weapon and motioned for silence. A trooper checked the hallway monitor.
A delivery driver stood in the lobby holding three pizza boxes.
Dahlia whispered, “I did order pizza.”
Ruiz turned slowly. “With what phone?”
“The landline.”
“You gave the address?”
“How else would he deliver it?”
Ruiz shut her eyes.
“I used a fake name,” Dahlia said.
“What name?”
“Celeste.”
Wren stared at her.
“It was the first one I thought of.”
The pizzas were sent away unopened.
Dahlia spent the next hour sitting at the kitchen table, furious and embarrassed. Wren joined her after Ruiz left.
“I made it worse,” Dahlia said.
“You wanted pizza.”
“I could have gotten us killed for pepperoni.”
“Morrow already knows the building.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He knew my apartment.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It wasn’t intended to be.”
Dahlia folded a paper napkin into smaller and smaller squares.
“I hate this version of you,” she said.
Wren looked at her.
“The version who acts like nothing can hurt because everything already has.”
“That is dramatic.”
“It is accurate.”
May you like
Wren reached for the napkin. Dahlia held it away.
“You didn’t tell me about the debt. You didn’t tell me about the crash. You didn’t tell me you were losing weight because you were skipping lunch.”
