Chapter 3 - THE MIDNIGHT AUDIT
The ledger on the mahogany desk in the third-floor office was bound in calfskin and weighed nearly four pounds.
Rafe Santoro didn't use a computer for the house accounts. Computers left footprints in cables and cloud servers. Paper could be burned, shredded, or locked behind a Chubb safe that required both a thumbprint and a six-digit code known only to him and a dead man.
He turned a page. His thumb traced a line of ink written in Bernadette's precise, slanted cursive.
Staff Payroll — October.
His finger stopped halfway down the list.
Hollis, Marin.
Then he dropped his finger three lines lower.
Whitaker, Eleanor.
He looked up at the wall opposite his desk. A massive oil painting of the Boston skyline hung there, dark and somber. Behind it lay the wall safe.
He stood up, walked to the window, and pulled the heavy velvet drape back an inch.
Down in the gravel courtyard, a single car sat idling near the iron gates—a black sedan with no plates and tinted windows. A man sat inside, smoking a cigarette, the orange tip glowing like a dying star in the dark.
It was Victor Vance. Teddy Vain’s head of security.
They were looking for her. Or perhaps they were looking for the locket.
The door to the office clicked open without a sound. Abel Ferraro slipped inside like smoke through a keyhole, his old bones popping softly as he closed the heavy oak door behind him.
"She didn't go to the hospital," Abel said, his voice like gravel grinding in a tin pail. "She went straight to the laundry room, washed her hands in cold water, and stayed there for twenty minutes staring at a silver locket she keeps in her pocket."
Rafe didn't turn around. "Did she cry?"
"Not a tear," Abel replied, leaning his shoulder against the bookshelf. "Not a sound. Reminds me of her old man. Arthur Whitaker didn't make a sound when they pulled him out of the river either. Just looked at us with those dead, wide eyes like he knew we were coming."
"Arthur Whitaker was a honest cop in a city where honesty is a capital offense," Rafe said quietly. "His daughter shouldn't be scrubbing floors in my house."
"She applied under a false name, Boss. Eleanor Whitaker became Nell Whitaker. She dropped two letters and thought nobody would check the tax rolls." Abel stepped closer, his face shadowed in the amber desk lamp light. "Teddy Vain is sniffing around the back gates. He says she stole a diamond brooch from his mother during the party. He wants her handed over to his private guards."
Rafe turned away from the window.
The silence in the room grew heavy, the kind of silence that precedes a lightning strike.
"Did she steal it?" Rafe asked.
"No," Abel said. "Teddy planted it in her apron pocket while she was picking up the glass. One of his boys dropped it there. I saw it on the security cameras from the east corridor."
Rafe walked back to his desk. He picked up his steel pen.
He didn't look angry. That was the terrible thing about Rafael Santoro—when he was furious, he looked like a man carving a statue out of ice.
"Tell Teddy Vain," Rafe said, his voice dropping an octave, "that if any of his men step foot on Ravenscliffe property again without an explicit invitation from me, I will personally feed them to the catfish in the reservoir behind the south pasture."
Abel didn't smile. He just nodded once. "And the girl?"
Rafe looked down at the ledger, his finger resting squarely over the name Whitaker, Eleanor.
May you like
"Leave her be," Rafe said. "For now. I want to see what she does when the trap springs."
THE END OF CHAPTER 3
