Chapter 4 - THE FACE IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
The heavy silver pocket watch felt cold, even from where I stood.
Dominic stared at it, his thumb tracing the intricate, engraved initials on the casing. D.R.
His father’s watch. The watch he had tucked into Sarah’s folded hands the morning of her funeral.
"Are you absolutely certain?" I asked gently.
Dominic didn't look up. "I bought it for my father when we secured our first commercial building. When Sarah died, I wanted her to take a piece of our family history with her."
He looked at Laura. "You found this today? In Robert Hayes's office?"
Laura nodded, wiping a tear from her cheek. Little Leo clung to her leg, his wide eyes scanning the room, sensing the heavy tension.
"The office was dark," Laura explained, her voice trembling. "The receptionist was gone. The door was unlocked. I walked in, calling for him. The place looked like it had been turned upside down. Drawers pulled out, files on the floor. And this..." She pointed to the watch in Dominic's hand. "This was lying right in the middle of his private office."
Michael stepped forward. "Why would Dr. Hayes have Mom’s watch? Did he grave-rob her?"
"No," Dominic said sharply. The answer came too fast. Too certain.
He pressed the small latch on the top of the watch.
The silver casing sprang open.
Inside, the glass face was shattered. The hands were stopped at exactly 11:42.
But that wasn't what made Dominic gasp.
Tucked behind the broken glass, wedged against the brass gears, was a small, tightly folded piece of paper.
It was a child's drawing.
I stepped closer to look. It was drawn in bright, messy crayons. A picture of a house, a big tree, and three stick figures holding hands.
In the corner, written in clumsy, blocky letters, was a name:
LEO.
Dominic looked at his daughter. "Why is Leo's drawing inside a watch that has been buried for seven years?"
Laura stared at the drawing, her mouth falling open. "Dad... Leo didn't draw that."
"His name is on it."
"Leo is six years old," Laura said, her voice rising in panic. "Mom died seven years ago. Leo wasn't even born yet!"
The silence in the library was absolute.
A drawing signed by a child who hadn't been born, inside a watch that was supposed to be underground, found in the office of a doctor who was currently trying to declare Dominic incompetent.
It defied logic.
Which meant we were looking at the wrong logic.
I looked at the drawing again. The crayon strokes. The heavy pressure on the paper.
"May I?" I asked, holding out my hand.
Dominic hesitated, then handed me the drawing.
I turned it over.
On the back, the paper was yellowed and stiff. Not from age, but from something having been spilled on it and dried long ago.
I held it up to the brass desk lamp.
The bright light revealed a faint watermark in the thick paper.
St. Jude's Pediatric Ward.
"Mr. Russo," I said slowly. "Did Michael or Laura ever stay at St. Jude's when they were young?"
Dominic frowned. "No. They were perfectly healthy."
"What about Gabriel?"
Dominic's breath hitched. "Gabriel died at St. Jude's."
I looked at the messy letters again. L-E-O.
"Gabriel was three," I said. "Three-year-olds are just learning to write. They often mix up letters, or write them backwards."
I flipped the paper over and held it against the light so the letters showed through in reverse.
They didn't spell LEO.
They spelled O-E-L.
Wait. No.
I traced the crayon lines with my finger.
The 'L' wasn't an L. It was a '7'.
The 'E' was a '3'.
The 'O' was a '0'.
730.
It wasn't a name. It was a number.
"Does the number seven-thirty mean anything to you?" I asked.
Michael's head snapped up. "That's the security code to the shipping yard gates."
"No," Dominic corrected, his voice hard. "That's the old code. We changed it five years ago."
"Who had that code?" I asked.
"Everyone on the executive board," Dominic said. "Including Richard Coleman."
The attorney.
The man who had partnered with Elaine to declare Dominic unfit. The man who had arranged the temporary voting transfer.
The pieces were shifting.
"If Sarah put this drawing in the watch before she died," I reasoned, "and she left the watch for someone to find... she wasn't leaving a memory. She was leaving a map."
"A map to what?" Michael asked.
"To wherever she hid the actual voting shares," Dominic realized.
He looked at the ledger still sitting on his desk. The payments to Dr. Hayes.
"Robert Hayes didn't dig up my wife's grave," Dominic said, a cold fury settling over his features. "He had the watch the whole time. Sarah gave it to him before she died. She paid him to keep it safe."
"Why would she trust him?" Laura asked.
"She didn't," Dominic replied. "She paid him two hundred thousand dollars to make sure he'd hold onto it. Blackmail money. He knew something, and she bought his silence, but she used him as a vault."
"But why was the watch on the floor of his office today?" I asked.
Dominic's eyes darkened. "Because someone else figured it out. Someone broke into Robert's office today looking for it. They dropped it when Laura walked in."
Suddenly, little Leo tugged on his mother's coat.
He pointed a small finger toward the large bay window of the library, overlooking the front driveway.
"Mommy," Leo said in a quiet, high voice. "That man is here."
We all turned.
Pulling through the iron gates of the estate was a sleek, black town car.
It didn't park in the visitor's circle. It pulled directly up to the front steps.
The driver’s door opened.
Dr. Robert Hayes stepped out.
He didn't look like a respected physician. His shirt was torn at the collar. He was bleeding from a cut above his left eyebrow. He looked terrified.
And he wasn't alone.
The rear door opened, and Elaine stepped out.
She wasn't wearing her elegant cream blouse anymore. She was wearing a dark trench coat.
And around her neck, gleaming even in the overcast afternoon light, was a heavy, emerald and diamond necklace.
May you like
Dominic grabbed the edge of the desk. The wood groaned under his grip.
"That's Sarah's necklace," he whispered, his voice trembling with a rage I had never heard before. "She was buried in that necklace."
