Chapter 11 - The Price of a Building
Curtis asked to meet Lila in a crowded bakery, far from the diner's cameras. He ordered coffee he didn't drink and placed an envelope between them.
“It has copies of the accounts Pierpoint asked me to keep off the main books.”
“Why give it to me?”
“Because they called the note due.”
Lila waited.
“Thirty days,” Curtis said. “Unless I sign away the place. They know I can't refinance that fast.”
“That's what they wanted all along?”
“At first they wanted cash. Then they wanted employees' names and direct-deposit details. Nico called it an advance program. I knew the workers hadn't signed up.”
“You took their wages anyway.”
He rubbed his head with both palms. “My father left me that diner. I couldn't let it go.”
“So you made us pay to keep your inheritance.”
Curtis looked up, wounded by a truth he'd spent a year avoiding.
“Tell the attorney all of this,” Lila said. “Not me.”
He pushed the envelope closer. “Will your grandfather save the place?”
“No. That's not how this gets fixed.”
She left the papers untouched. Dina could arrange proper delivery and document their source; Lila didn't intend to turn a frightened man's confession into another missing-record mystery.
Across town, Sal and an independent forensic accountant named Judith Reese reviewed Pierpoint's books. Judith showed him payments from one company to another, fees described as security consultations, and cash receipts recorded under initials.
“Your signature authorized the parent company's guarantee,” she said.
“I signed that years ago.”
“The guarantee remained in force. Whether you knew what Nico later did is a separate question. You cannot tell investigators this never involved you.”
Sal thought of Elena asking him to read a stack of notices at the kitchen table. He had said he was tired. He had been tired for twenty-five years when looking would have cost him something.
“I want all of it preserved,” he told Judith. “Every ledger, every email, including mine.”
She studied him. “That may not be comfortable.”
May you like
“I have had a comfortable life.”
Before closing, Curtis posted a handwritten sign in the Harbor Diner's window: TEMPORARILY CLOSED FOR REPAIRS. Ray later saw Curtis bolt the door while two Pierpoint employees watched from the sidewalk. There were no repairs scheduled.
