Chapter 2 - THE GIRL ON THE PHONE
The address stitched into the yellow fabric led to a building that had been empty for eleven years.
That was the first thing Paul D'Angelo told Vincent.
And it was the first thing that made Vincent decide they were going there before sunrise.
Paul was the security chief who had been standing near the dining room doors when I opened the hidden compartment in the music box. He was fifty-three, built like a man who had spent his life standing between trouble and somebody richer than himself.
He studied the address again.
“Fourteen Barlow Street. Charlestown.”
Vincent buttoned his black overcoat.
“What used to be there?”
“A photography studio.”
Camille stood near the fireplace, pale and furious.
“This is insane. Someone sends a piece of fabric with an address and suddenly everyone behaves as if Emily is waiting there?”
Vincent looked at her.
“You told me that box came from Paris.”
“It did.”
“Through whom?”
Camille hesitated.
That hesitation changed the room.
Vincent noticed it too.
“Name.”
“Dominic.”
Paul looked up.
So did Vincent.
I didn’t know who Dominic was.
I learned quickly.
Dominic Caruso was Vincent’s cousin.
He managed three of the family’s commercial properties and had been sitting seven seats away from me during dinner.
He had left the house ten minutes before Vincent ordered the doors locked.
Vincent’s face became unreadable.
“Call him.”
Paul did.
No answer.
Camille crossed her arms.
“That proves nothing. Dominic knew I wanted an antique. He gave me the number of a dealer.”
“What dealer?”
“I don’t remember his full name.”
Vincent stared at her.
“You bought an eighteenth-century music box from a man whose name you don’t remember?”
Her jaw tightened.
“I have his information upstairs.”
Vincent turned to Paul.
“Get it.”
Then he looked at me.
“Nora.”
“Yes?”
“You’re still coming.”
Camille laughed once.
It was a cold sound.
“You’re taking the housekeeper into a family matter?”
Vincent picked up the music box.
“No.”
His eyes stayed on mine.
“I’m taking the only person in this house who noticed someone was trying to speak to me.”
Twenty minutes later, I was in the back seat of a dark SUV with Vincent beside me and Paul in front.
Boston before dawn looked nothing like Boston at dinner.
No chandeliers.
No champagne.
Just wet pavement, traffic lights changing for empty streets, and the dirty gray edge of morning beginning behind the rooftops.
Vincent held the pink bead in his palm.
He had barely spoken since we left.
Finally, I asked, “How do you know Emily made it?”
He turned the bead between his fingers.
“She went through a bracelet phase.”
His voice softened.
“She made one for everybody. Mine was blue. Her grandmother’s was green. Hers was pink and white.”
He swallowed.
“She lost that bead two weeks before she disappeared.”
Something about that bothered me.
“Lost where?”
“Her bedroom.”
“So whoever put it inside the music box had access to your house three years ago.”
Vincent looked at me.
Then at Paul.
Paul’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“That narrows the list,” he said.
Vincent’s expression hardened.
“No. It makes the list worse.”
Fourteen Barlow Street sat between an old brick warehouse and a boarded-up bakery.
The photography studio still had faded gold lettering on the glass.
MORROW PORTRAITS.
Paul opened the door with a key Vincent had obtained through the property owner.
Inside smelled like dust and old wood.
There was no furniture.
No photographs.
No evidence anyone had been there recently.
For five minutes, I thought we had been sent on a cruel joke.
Then I heard it.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
I stopped.
Vincent noticed.
“What?”
“There’s a clock running.”
Paul looked around.
“I don’t hear anything.”
I did.
My father had made me spend half my childhood listening for machines behind walls.
A mechanical movement had a different rhythm from an electrical one.
I followed the sound to the rear room.
A cheap framed landscape hung crookedly against the plaster.
Behind it was an old recessed cabinet.
Inside sat a mantel clock.
It was running.
And beneath it was a photograph.
Vincent reached it before I did.
His breath stopped.
The photograph showed a girl standing beside a white fence.
Older than seven.
Longer hair.
Thinner face.
But unmistakably Emily.
She held a newspaper against her chest.
The date was six weeks earlier.
Vincent’s fingers began to shake.
Not much.
But enough that I saw it.
Paul whispered, “My God.”
Vincent touched Emily’s face in the photograph.
For three years, he had been searching for a body.
A grave.
A witness.
Anything.
Now he was looking at proof his daughter had been alive six weeks ago.
On the back of the photograph, someone had written one sentence.
SHE STILL SINGS WHEN SHE’S AFRAID.
Vincent closed his eyes.
“What does that mean?” Paul asked.
Vincent didn’t answer immediately.
Finally, he said, “Her mother used to sing that lullaby.”
The one from the music box.
I looked again at the clock.
There was something familiar about the sound.
Not just the movement.
The uneven double click after every twenty seconds.
I opened the wooden door beneath the clock face.
My stomach dropped.
Stamped into the brass movement were three letters.
E.B.R.
My father’s initials.
Edward Bennett Repair.
“This was my father’s.”
Vincent turned sharply.
“What?”
“He rebuilt this movement. I know his stamp.”
Paul stepped closer.
“Could be years old.”
“It is.”
I pointed toward the regulator.
“My father always bent the adjustment arm slightly to the left after servicing these. Said it made future repairs easier.”
Vincent looked from the clock to me.
Someone had deliberately chosen a clock my father repaired.
Someone had deliberately chosen me to notice it.
Then I saw something behind the pendulum.
A folded piece of paper.
I pulled it free.
There were only six words.
NORA KNOWS WHERE THE FIRST BOX SLEPT.
I read it twice.
“I don’t know what that means.”
Vincent’s voice became quiet.
“Think.”
I did.
First box.
Music box.
Where it slept.
My father’s old repair shop.
The one we had closed after his stroke.
The building had been sold almost two years earlier.
I hadn’t entered it since.
Paul was already reaching for his phone when it rang.
He listened for less than ten seconds.
Then his face changed.
“What?” Vincent asked.
Paul lowered the phone.
“Someone broke into Nora’s father’s old shop about an hour ago.”
Cold spread through my chest.
Vincent stepped closer.
“What was taken?”
Paul looked directly at me.
“Nothing the new owner can identify.”
He paused.
“But whoever went inside opened a section of wall that had been sealed for years.”
My mouth went dry.
Because my father had built that wall himself.
And I suddenly remembered something he told me when I was sixteen.
Never remove the third panel behind the workbench.
I had thought it was because of electrical wiring.
Now Vincent was staring at me.
“What’s behind it?”
“I don’t know.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
Paul reached for it.
Vincent stopped him.
“Let her answer.”
I pressed the phone to my ear.
For three seconds, there was only breathing.
Then a little girl’s voice whispered—
“Is this Nora?”
My heart stopped.
“Yes.”
A pause.
Then:
“My dad is with you, isn’t he?”
I looked at Vincent.
His face had gone completely white.
“Emily?”
The girl began to cry.
Very quietly.
And then she said the words that changed everything.
“Please don’t let him go back to his house.”
May you like
The line went dead.
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