Chapter 2 - The Warehouse Job
Nora locked the diner door while Silas sat where she could watch him. She did not turn off the OPEN sign until Frank had safely reached his car.
"Start with the name," she said.
"Dorian Pike."
"The man who told your collectors to shake down a diner?"
"He used to handle contracts for me. Now he's buying up debts through an investment company called Harbor Street Recovery. He's used my name to make people pay."
"You own Harbor Street?"
"I financed its first two years. I should have shut it down when I could."
"That's not an answer."
"I still own twenty percent."
Nora wrote the name and percentage on the back of an order ticket. She refused to let him arrange the facts into a confession that made him sound noble.
"Tell me about Paul."
Silas opened his coat. Nora stepped back, but he only removed a worn envelope.
"Your father operated a small hauling fleet. I paid him to transport equipment that I didn't want associated with my companies. Some of it was stolen. Some was obtained legally, but the paperwork was false. He learned the difference too late."
"He told us he moved restaurant supplies."
"He did. Mostly. I exploited that legitimate work."
He slid the envelope over the counter. There were photographs of a low brick building, a copy of a dispatch ticket, and a handwritten note signed P. KEENE.
The note said: I won't drive this load unless we correct the manifest.
Nora recognized her father's blocky capitals. They were the letters he had used to label lunch boxes and address birthday cards.
"Who wrote the manifest?"
"Dorian."
"And you sent my father anyway."
Silas nodded.
"There was a delivery at Mercer that couldn't be left overnight. I told Paul to pick up the original shipping ledger before Dorian destroyed it. I knew the building had failed an inspection. I knew the rear exits had been chained while trucks were unloaded. I believed the risk was manageable because I needed the records."
"You sent him into a warehouse you knew was unsafe."
"Yes."
"And when it burned?"
"I paid an attorney to tell the insurance investigators less than I knew. I let them believe Paul was there on his own."
She had imagined this conversation a hundred times, but never with a man capable of confirming her worst suspicion sitting across from the pie display.
"Did you start the fire?"
"No. I don't know who did. The fire marshal reported an electrical fault, and I have no evidence that conclusion was wrong. What I know is that I put your father inside that building, and he would have lived if I'd listened when he refused the job."
The distinction mattered, even through her anger. A lie about murder would help no one, and she had spent twelve years watching people turn uncertainty into certainty because it made their grief easier to carry.
"What happened to the ledger?"
"It wasn't recovered."
"What happened to Dorian?"
"He became more valuable to the companies that survived. I promoted him."
Nora made him repeat that last sentence.
Silas did, without looking away.
"And now you come to my diner because your employee has become inconvenient."
"Because I'm dying," he said.
She saw nothing romantic in the revelation. A failing heart did not make a person honest; sometimes it merely made them frightened of dying with their secrets intact.
"Do you have documents to support any of this?"
"Some. There are bank statements and correspondence."
"Then give them to someone who can authenticate them."
He held out a card for a lawyer named Miriam Vale. Nora did not touch it.
"I choose my own lawyer."
"Good," Silas said.
The relief in his voice almost made her angrier than the admission.
A car turned into the parking lot, stopped without switching off its headlights, and backed out again. Silas watched it leave.
"Call your mother tonight," he said.
"Why?"
"Ask her where she kept Paul's red notebook."
May you like
Nora's heart began to beat hard.
Her mother had told her that notebook burned in the warehouse.
