Chương 5
The drop-in center answered on the sixth ring. A woman with a rough, impatient voice said Mara was not there and asked whether Victoria was a debt collector.
“This is Victoria Hale.”
“That makes it less reassuring.”
“I need to speak with her.”
“You and everyone with a podcast.”
“Please tell her the room is available.”
“I told her.”
“Will she use it?”
“I’m not her parole officer.”
“Is she safe?”
Tessa was silent long enough for Victoria to hear voices in the center and a metal cart rolling over tile.
“She was safe yesterday,” Tessa said. “Then her face went online.”
The next morning, an envelope was delivered to Victoria’s home before sunrise.
It contained the two hundred dollars, minus twenty-three, and a note on the back of a pharmacy receipt.
Food, bus pass, socks. You said no conditions. Publicity is a condition.
Daniel read the note at the kitchen island while Victoria made coffee she did not drink. Their home occupied the upper floors of a renovated Gold Coast townhouse. Every window had custom treatments, yet Victoria had never figured out which switch opened the western shades. Daniel did it without looking.
“What do you think she wants?” Victoria asked.
“I think she told you.”
“No one spends thirty years searching merely to be heard for forty minutes.”
“Maybe she spent thirty years trying not to be the only person who knew.”
Victoria opened the refrigerator, stared inside, and closed it.
Daniel folded the receipt carefully. “Grant’s reaction bothers me.”
“Only his reaction?”
“The records team found the old property plans. There was a laundry annex behind the west service wing. It was demolished in 1994.”
“And Otis?”
“Otis Lane worked here from 1978 to 1993. He was fired for sleeping on duty and allowing unauthorized people into the building.”
“Where is he?”
“Died in 2007.”
Victoria rubbed her forehead.
Daniel continued. “The personnel file includes a disciplinary memo from Grant’s office dated two weeks after your mother disappeared.”
“What does it say?”
“That Otis spread malicious rumors about a female guest leaving through the service entrance.”
“My mother was not a guest.”
“No.”
“Who signed the termination?”
“Your father.”
Victoria poured the coffee into the sink.
At nine, she met with an independent attorney named Camille Price, whose firm specialized in internal investigations and whose refusal to flatter wealthy clients had cost her several of them. Camille read Mara’s certified receipt, Otis’s personnel file, and a transcript of Grant’s call.
“You have enough to ask questions,” she said. “You do not have enough to accuse anyone.”
“I have not accused anyone.”
“You called me before breakfast. That is an accusation in your language.”
Victoria looked toward Daniel. He almost smiled.
Camille removed her glasses. “Your mother’s missing-person case belongs to the Chicago Police Department. You can hire investigators, but you should not interfere with witnesses or collect physical evidence casually. If Ms. Ellis is telling the truth, the locket may matter. Its chain of custody is already poor.”
“She has carried it for thirty-four years.”
“That is a story, not a chain.”
“She will not surrender it.”
“Then don’t force her. Ask whether she will allow it to be photographed and examined in her presence.”
Victoria stared at the scratch in the conference table. It had been there since her father’s time, hidden by a blotter until she removed his furniture.
“What about Grant?”
“Do not warn him before we preserve records.”
“He is board chairman.”
“He is also your uncle. Those facts create more problems, not fewer.”
By noon Camille had obtained authorization from the company’s audit committee to preserve files related to Eleanor Hale’s disappearance, Grant Hale’s correspondence, old security contracts, and charitable disbursements from 1992 through 2001. Grant objected in writing. His objection was six pages and used the phrase reputational sabotage four times.
Mara remained missing.
Tessa eventually admitted that Mara sometimes slept beneath the Kennedy Expressway near Hubbard Street, but reporters had found the encampment first. Someone had thrown a cup of soda at her and demanded to see the necklace. Another person offered five thousand dollars for it while recording himself.
Sofia found Mara that evening at a public library branch, asleep in a chair near the large-print books.
Victoria went alone.
The library was closing. A security guard stood near the front desk with the patient irritation of a man who had repeated the same announcement too many times. Mara sat with her hood up, the locket hidden inside her dress.
She opened her eyes before Victoria reached the table.
“You brought a car,” she said.
“It is outside.”
“I can tell. People in here keep looking through the window.”
“I found somewhere else for you to stay.”
“I gave the money back.”
“I received it.”
“I owe you twenty-three dollars.”
“You bought socks.”
“That doesn’t make them your socks.”
Victoria pulled out the chair opposite her. The library guard announced closing again.
“The hotel room is no longer safe,” Victoria said. “A private apartment has been arranged through an organization that works with Tessa’s center. The lease is in the organization’s name. No hotel employees. No cameras.”
“How long?”
“Thirty days to begin.”
“And after?”
“We reassess.”
“There’s the condition.”
“There are always conditions, Mara. Rent has conditions. Shelters have conditions. My home has conditions.”
“You don’t lose your home when you miss a meeting.”
“No.”
The admission quieted the argument.
Mara gathered a grocery bag containing a paperback, a bottle of water, and a gray scarf. “I don’t want Daniel coming by.”
“Why?”
“He watches me like I’m a math problem.”
“He watches everyone that way.”
“You married it?”
“Apparently.”
Mara’s mouth twitched.
The guard approached. “Ladies, we are closed.”
Victoria stood.
Outside, cameras waited beyond the library’s glass doors.
Mara stopped. “I’m not going through that.”
“There is a staff exit.”
“Of course you know.”
May you like
“I own hotels. We survive on staff exits.”
A librarian led them through a workroom smelling of toner and dust. Mara walked quickly, keeping one hand against the locket beneath her dress. Behind the building, Sofia waited in an unmarked sedan rather than the hotel car.
