Chapter 3 - THE SECRET BEHIND THE THIRD PANEL
Vincent called Emily’s name three times after the phone disconnected.
He knew she couldn’t hear him.
He did it anyway.
Paul tried tracing the call.
The number had been routed through an internet service and disappeared almost immediately.
But the important part had already happened.
Vincent had heard his daughter’s voice.
For the first time in three years.
He sat in the back of the SUV outside the abandoned studio and stared straight ahead.
“She sounded older.”
It was the only thing he said for several minutes.
Then he looked at me.
“Why would she tell you not to let me go home?”
“I don’t know.”
“She knew your name.”
“Yes.”
“She knew you were with me.”
“Yes.”
Vincent’s expression tightened.
“So somebody is watching us.”
Paul turned from the driver’s seat.
“Then we shouldn’t go to the Bennett shop.”
Vincent looked at him.
“That’s exactly where we’re going.”
My father’s old shop stood in Pawtucket, just across the Rhode Island line.
The sign was gone.
The narrow front window had been replaced.
But when I stepped inside, I smelled machine oil and dust, and for one painful second I was seventeen again.
Dad stood behind the workbench.
Mom brought coffee after closing.
And every clock in the building seemed to breathe.
The new owner had called the police about the break-in, but nothing obvious had been stolen.
The third panel behind Dad’s workbench was hanging open.
Inside the wall was a metal cavity.
Empty.
Almost empty.
A single brass screw remained on the floor.
I picked it up.
“This came from a music-box movement.”
Vincent crouched beside me.
“What was kept here?”
“I don’t know.”
Paul examined the edges.
“Whatever it was, somebody knew exactly where to look.”
That left one person who might know.
My father.
Edward Bennett was sixty-two.
Before the stroke, he could rebuild a Swiss cylinder movement with his eyes half closed.
Now some mornings he needed help buttoning his shirt.
He lived at Meadowbrook Rehabilitation Center outside Worcester.
When we arrived, Dad was doing hand exercises with a therapist.
He smiled when he saw me.
Then he noticed Vincent.
The smile vanished.
Dad’s damaged right hand began to tremble.
I had never seen that reaction from him.
“Dad?”
He stared at Vincent.
Then at the music box Vincent was carrying.
“No.”
The word came out rough.
“Dad, do you know this box?”
His eyes filled.
“No.”
But he was nodding.
Vincent took one step forward.
“Mr. Bennett, my daughter is alive.”
Dad shut his eyes.
I felt as if the floor shifted.
“You knew about Emily?”
He looked at me.
Pain crossed his face.
His speech was slow since the stroke, but when he forced the words out, there was no mistaking them.
“I… fixed… box.”
“When?”
He struggled.
“Three… years.”
Vincent became absolutely still.
Three years.
The year Emily disappeared.
“Who brought it to you?” Vincent asked.
Dad’s eyes moved toward the hallway.
Fear.
Real fear.
Paul quietly closed the door.
“You’re safe,” I told him.
Dad looked at me as if he wanted to believe it.
Then he whispered, “Woman.”
“What woman?”
“Red… coat.”
“Name?”
Dad shook his head.
Vincent placed the pink bead on the table beside him.
Dad stared at it.
His face crumpled.
He reached for a notepad with his left hand.
Slowly, painfully, he wrote:
GIRL WAS THERE.
My throat tightened.
“Emily came to the shop?”
Dad nodded.
Vincent grabbed the back of a chair.
He looked as if somebody had struck him.
“When?”
Dad wrote again.
SIX DAYS AFTER.
Six days after Emily disappeared.
Vincent had spent those six days turning Boston upside down.
And his daughter had been forty-five miles away in my father’s repair shop.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked.
Dad looked at Vincent.
Then wrote two more words.
SHE BEGGED.
“Emily?”
Dad shook his head.
“The woman?” I asked.
He nodded.
The woman in the red coat claimed someone inside Vincent’s own household had arranged Emily’s disappearance.
She said going to police or to Vincent would expose the girl’s location.
Dad hadn’t believed her.
Not completely.
Then a man came into the shop the following morning.
Dad had never learned his name.
The man knew where I attended college.
Where Mom worked.
What time my younger sister came home from school.
Dad understood the message.
So he stayed quiet.
I was furious.
Then I saw his face.
For three years, he had carried this alone.
Before I could ask another question, he pointed at the music box.
“Two.”
“Two boxes?” I asked.
He nodded.
That explained the note.
Nora knows where the first box slept.
Dad had repaired two identical music boxes.
The first belonged to Emily’s mother, Julia Caruso.
The second had been built as a copy.
“Where’s the original?” Vincent asked.
Dad looked at him.
Then wrote:
YOU HAD IT.
Vincent frowned.
“I never had a music box.”
Dad underlined the words.
YOUR WIFE DID.
The room became quiet.
Julia Caruso had died five years earlier.
According to Vincent, most of her personal belongings had been packed away.
Paul made a call.
Ten minutes later he had an answer.
Julia’s belongings had been stored in a locked room at Vincent’s Beacon Hill house.
The same house Emily had just warned us not to return to.
Before Vincent could speak, Dad grabbed my wrist.
His left hand was surprisingly strong.
“Nora.”
“Yes?”
“Woman… came.”
“When?”
He raised two fingers.
“Two days ago?”
He nodded.
“What woman?”
Dad struggled for the word.
Then pointed toward my coat.
“Gold.”
My stomach tightened.
Camille had worn pale gold at dinner.
Vincent understood at the same moment.
“Camille came here?”
Dad nodded.
Vincent stepped away and called Paul.
But Paul was already looking toward the hallway.
A nurse stood in the doorway.
“Mr. Bennett?”
“Yes?”
“You had another visitor earlier this week too.”
Dad looked confused.
The nurse smiled apologetically.
“A gentleman. I remember because he said he was family.”
Vincent’s voice changed.
“What gentleman?”
She described him.
Mid-forties.
Gray at the temples.
Expensive coat.
A small scar above his right eyebrow.
Paul swore under his breath.
Vincent did not.
He didn’t need to.
I had seen that man the previous night.
Seven seats down from Vincent at dinner.
“Dominic,” I whispered.
The nurse nodded.
“That sounds right.”
Vincent looked at my father.
“What did Dominic want?”
Dad suddenly became agitated.
He searched his bedside drawer.
Then the cabinet.
Then beneath his pillow.
“Dad?”
His breathing quickened.
“Book.”
“What book?”
“Blue.”
The small ledger he had kept for forty years.
Every unusual repair.
Every special customer.
Every serial number.
Gone.
Paul immediately headed into the hallway.
Then my father grabbed Vincent’s sleeve.
There was one more thing he needed to say.
He dragged the notepad toward himself and wrote in shaking block letters.
DON’T TRUST THE DATE.
Vincent stared at it.
“What date?”
Dad pointed at the yellow fabric.
The stitched words.
THIS FRIDAY.
Then he wrote:
NOT MEETING.
I leaned closer.
“What is it?”
Dad looked at Vincent.
His eyes were full of fear.
And he wrote one final sentence.
May you like
IT’S THE DAY THEY MOVE HER.
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