Part 5
“Her father was chief engineer when the room existed.”
“Did he know?”
“I don’t know.”
“And what does she have to lose?”
“Malcolm plans to eliminate her department.”
Daniel nodded once. “That’s a beginning.”
“Not tonight.”
“Agreed.”
“And we do nothing on company devices.”
“Agreed.”
“And you don’t conduct an amateur investigation.”
“I’m offended by ‘amateur.’”
Despite herself, Claire smiled.
It lasted less than a second.
Daniel saw it and did not comment.
They left through the kitchen to avoid the press line. The executive chef hugged Claire with flour on his sleeve. A dishwasher called congratulations from behind a rack of glasses. Near the loading dock, two banquet servers argued quietly about a missing coat. Life continued with insulting normalcy.
Their car waited in the underground garage. Daniel opened the door for her, then paused.
“Do you want to go home?”
Claire looked at the black sedan, at the wet concrete, at the security camera mounted above the exit.
“No.”
“Where?”
“The Lakeview.”
Daniel understood. The Lakeview was a smaller Whitmore property three miles north, built in the 1920s and mostly ignored by Malcolm because its rooms were too small for modern luxury standards. Claire had worked there during college summers. Its general manager, Marianne Shaw, had once fired a donor’s son for grabbing a bartender.
They drove through the rain without speaking.
At the Lakeview, the night clerk recognized Claire and started to congratulate her. She asked for a room under Daniel’s name and paid with his personal card. The clerk’s surprise was visible but discreet.
The room had radiator heat, floral wallpaper, and a window facing an alley. A neon pharmacy sign colored the ceiling red every few seconds.
Claire removed the jeweled shawl and placed it in the closet.
Daniel watched from the doorway.
“This is where you want to stay?” he asked.
“For tonight.”
“We have an apartment.”
“Malcolm knows the staff in our building.”
“He knows the staff here.”
“Not as well.”
Daniel set their phones on the desk. “Should we turn them off?”
“No. That looks stranger. Put yours on airplane mode. I’ll leave mine on.”
“To let him track you?”
“To let him think I’m predictable.”
He stared at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
“You’ve been preparing for this longer than you admit.”
Claire sat on the bed. The mattress springs complained.
“I’ve been preparing not to be surprised.”
“That isn’t the same as preparing to act.”
“No.”
Daniel pulled the armchair close but did not sit. “Will you show me?”
Her hand moved instinctively to her wrist.
“You already saw.”
“I saw enough to ask. I didn’t see what you carry.”
Claire looked at the neon light moving across the ceiling.
“No.”
“Okay.”
The lack of argument loosened something in her chest.
He sat in the chair and removed his shoes. One sock had a small hole near the toe.
Claire stared at it.
“What?” he asked.
“You own twelve tuxedos.”
“Three.”
“You cannot buy intact socks?”
“I did. This one deteriorated.”
She laughed once, abruptly, then covered her mouth.
The laughter changed shape and became a breath she could not finish.
Daniel stood but did not approach until she reached toward him. Then he sat beside her and held her while she cried without sound.
It was not elegant. Her earrings pressed into his neck. Her nose ran. At one point she pushed him away because she could not breathe, then pulled him back so quickly that his shoulder struck the headboard.
Neither of them apologized.
When the crying stopped, she went to the bathroom and washed her face with hotel soap.
Daniel ordered grilled cheese and tomato soup from room service. Claire said she was not hungry and ate half his sandwich.
At two in the morning, they made a list on the back of a laundry form.
Ruth Alvarez.
Old floor plans.
Maintenance records.
Key systems.
Insurance claims.
Former staff.
Claire added: My mother’s papers.
Daniel underlined it.
“Where are they?” he asked.
“Malcolm’s house.”
“You’re sure?”
“He moved her personal files after she died. He said the family office needed to catalog them.”
“Did you ever ask for them?”
“Twice.”
“And?”
“He said grief was making me obsessive.”
Daniel set down the pen.
“What?”
“I keep thinking I’ve reached the part where I can’t be more angry.”
“You’ll exhaust yourself.”
“I have excellent endurance.”
“That was almost a joke.”
“It was not.”
Claire took the pen and wrote another item.
Evan Carlisle.
Daniel looked at the name.
“Your ex?”
“He may know whether Malcolm interfered.”
“Do you want to contact him?”
“No.”
“Then why write it?”
“Because wanting has stopped being useful.”
They slept badly. Claire woke at four with Daniel’s hand resting near her elbow, as though even unconscious he had avoided her wrist.
At seven, she called Ruth Alvarez from the hotel room phone.
Ruth answered on the fifth ring. Her voice was husky with sleep.
“Archives.”
“It’s Claire.”
A pause. “Good morning, Ms. Whitmore.”
“Are you alone?”
Another pause. Longer.
“Yes.”
“I need to see the original subbasement plans for the flagship. Before the 2008 renovation.”
Ruth did not ask why.
“I’ll find them,” she said.
“Do not use the digital request system.”
“Understood.”
“And Ruth?”
“Yes?”
“Please don’t tell Malcolm.”
The line went quiet enough that Claire heard traffic outside Ruth’s apartment.
“I’ve been waiting seventeen years for someone to say that,” Ruth replied.
They met at ten in a storage warehouse on the South Side where the company kept furniture too valuable to discard and too unfashionable to display. Ruth arrived in jeans and a raincoat, carrying a cardboard tube.
She was fifty-eight, with iron-gray hair cut at her jaw and an expression that usually made junior executives reconsider incomplete sentences. Her father, Jorge Alvarez, had spent forty-one years repairing Whitmore hotels. A bronze plaque in the flagship’s engineering office carried his name.
May you like
Ruth set the tube on an old banquet table.
“I made copies,” she said. “The originals remain where they belong.”
