Chapter 6 - A Woman on the Platform
The train announcement Melissa had heard wasn't random.
Chicago had several downtown stations, but only one announced the suburban line name I'd caught beneath her breathing.
I gave that information to Detective Brooks, who asked me not to go looking myself.
I listened.
The old Eleanor would have believed that rescuing everyone personally was a form of loyalty.
The new Eleanor understood that rushing into danger could give Malcolm precisely what he wanted.
At three, Brooks called from the station.
"We found her."
My hands tightened around the phone.
"Is she all right?"
"Shaken. She says someone followed her. We have her somewhere safe."
Melissa had been carrying a flash drive inside the lining of her coat.
On it were entries from the garage access system, delivery logs, and an audio note she'd recorded during a meeting she hadn't realized was suspicious until later.
Brooks would not share protected investigative material.
She did tell us the records had been preserved for examination.
That afternoon Melissa called with the detective's permission.
"Mrs. Hart, I am so sorry."
"You didn't attack me."
"I brought you there."
"Because someone ordered you to."
Melissa was quiet.
"I should have asked why."
I knew that feeling better than she could imagine.
"Tell the truth now," I said. "That's what matters."
She described a private meeting between Vanessa and the head of building security on the day of the incident.
Afterward, someone using an administrator account exported the garage footage and deleted the ordinary staff copy.
The underlying security storage might still retain a recoverable version.
"The blue folder?" I asked.
Melissa inhaled.
"Malcolm has one just like it. He uses blue folders for files he doesn't want put on the regular system."
Daniel had been carrying a planted message, not the files she meant.
I felt shame at how close suspicion had come to becoming an accusation.
"Do you know what's in Malcolm's?"
"A chart. Company names. The same three letters over and over."
"Which letters?"
"HMG."
Hart Meridian Group.
The investment structure wasn't a mystery to Malcolm.
He had mapped it.
Melissa's final disclosure was worse.
"I heard him tell Vanessa she only needed one thing from your house."
"What thing?"
"A sealed envelope with your mother's handwriting."
I stared at the portrait of my mother on the table beside Charlotte's computer.
My mother's death had been slow and peaceful, and I had thought her affairs were settled.
But now two separate threats had pointed toward the same old house.
Someone believed my mother had left a document worth stealing.
May you like
And for the first time I wondered whether she'd known what Malcolm was before I did.
