Chapter 4: The Man Lucia Trusted
I sat in my car outside the bank for six minutes before I called the number back.
It rang twice.
"Mr.
Whitmore." The voice was older.
Careful.
The kind of careful that comes from years of choosing words around dangerous people.
"Thank you for calling."
"Who are you?" I said.
"I was Lucia's attorney.
Not your family attorney — mine.
A private arrangement she made in 2004.
She came to me alone.
She told me she needed someone who had no connection to you, to your business, or to anyone in your life."
"Why?"
A pause.
"Because she had discovered something about your company that she didn't know how to tell you.
And she was afraid of what would happen if the wrong people found out she knew."
My hand tightened on the phone.
"What did she discover?"
"Mr.
Whitmore, I think we should speak in person.
I'm at the Meridian Hotel on 54th — not your building, different name, coincidence.
Room 412.
I'll be here until eight o'clock."
"How do I know you're who you say you are?"
"Lucia told me that if you ever asked that question, I should tell you this: she kept the first book you ever gave her.
A water-damaged copy of Middlemarch with your handwriting on the inside cover.
She had it restored herself.
She never put it on display.
She kept it in the false bottom of her sewing box, underneath the ledger."
I closed my eyes.
The sewing box had been empty when I found the ledger.
I hadn't looked beneath the ledger itself.
I drove back to the estate.
Valerie was in the front hallway when I walked in, her arms crossed, her expression already set into the shape of a confrontation she had been rehearsing.
"Where have you been?
Sergio has been trying to reach you for hours."
"I needed some air," I said.
"Dad." She stepped toward me.
"I know today has been devastating.
But Sergio's offer is genuinely in your best interest.
The estate alone has tax exposure that—"
"Valerie." I kept my voice even.
"Where is the sewing box from your mother's closet?"
She blinked.
"What?"
"The wooden sewing box.
Where is it?"
Something moved across her face.
Fast.
Gone before I could name it.
"I don't know.
I think one of the staff may have moved it when they were tidying the room."
"Which staff member?"
"Dad, I don't—"
"Which staff member, Valerie?"
She straightened.
"I'll find out."
I went upstairs.
The sewing box was gone.
The closet had been neatened — Lucia's scarves refolded, her shoes realigned.
Someone had been in this room while I was at the bank.
I checked beneath the ledger in my blazer pocket.
There was nothing else there.
Whatever Lucia had hidden beneath it was already gone.
I changed my jacket, put the ledger in the inside pocket of the new one, and walked back downstairs.
Sergio was in the study.
He had poured himself a drink from my bar without asking.
He looked up when I entered and offered the expression of a man performing grief he did not feel.
"Arthur.
I'm glad you're back.
I was worried."
"I'm sure you were." I sat down across from him.
"Tell me about Raymond Holt."
The glass stopped halfway to his mouth.
"Raymond?" He set it down.
"What about him?"
"How long have you known him?"
"I — we've crossed paths professionally.
Why are you asking about Raymond today of all days?"
"Humor me."
Sergio leaned back.
The performance of grief had been replaced by something more careful.
"We worked on a tax matter together a few years ago.
It was routine.
Arthur, I'm not sure what you're looking for, but if someone has been putting ideas in your head on the day of your wife's funeral—"
"No one has put anything in my head." I stood up.
"I'll look at the documents tomorrow, Sergio.
I need to rest."
He watched me walk to the door.
"Arthur." His voice was quiet.
Flat.
The performance was completely gone now.
"Don't make this harder than it needs to be."
I didn't turn around.
I drove to the Meridian Hotel and knocked on the door of room 412 at seven forty-three.
Daniel Forsythe was seventy-two years old, white-haired, and wearing a cardigan that had seen better decades.
He opened the door and handed me an envelope before I had even stepped inside.
"She wrote that three weeks ago," he said.
"She knew she was running out of time."
I looked at the envelope.
My name on the front.
Lucia's handwriting.
My hands were shaking again.
"Sit down, Mr.
May you like
Whitmore," Daniel said gently.
"There is quite a lot she needed you to know."
