Chapter 4
Vanessa recovered quickly.
“Richard told me.”
Richard said nothing.
Maya looked from one to the other.
“When?”
Vanessa crossed her arms.
“Years ago.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember.”
Maya smiled faintly.
“Interesting.”
Richard finally spoke.
“I told her.”
Maya turned toward him.
“Then tell me when.”
Silence.
Two people who had spent months appearing perfectly coordinated had just given each other away over one small question.
Julian saw it too.
“Separate them.”
Richard’s expression darkened.
“You don’t have authority in my house.”
Maya answered.
“It’s my house too.”
Richard looked at her wedding ring.
Then at the orchid.
For the first time, Maya noticed how differently he looked at the two rings.
The wedding ring annoyed him.
The orchid frightened him.
Vanessa was taken to the morning room.
Richard remained in the library.
Maya stayed with Julian.
Thomas Bell closed the door.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Maya asked.
Julian sat slowly.
“Eleanor believed somebody inside the organization had helped arrange the attack against her.”
“Who?”
“She never proved it.”
“Who did she suspect?”
Julian looked toward the door.
“Richard’s father.”
Maya did not react immediately.
Richard’s father, Victor Vance, had died seven years earlier.
Richard spoke about him with almost religious loyalty.
According to Richard, Victor had transformed a small Chicago operation into a legitimate network of freight companies, security firms, property holdings, and restaurants.
Julian had just told Maya that story was incomplete.
“Did Victor know Eleanor survived?”
“Yes.”
“Did he know about the ring?”
“Yes.”
“Did Richard?”
Julian shook his head.
“I thought not.”
Maya looked at him.
“You thought?”
“When Richard was nineteen, Victor asked me whether Eleanor had ever created an orchid marker for anybody outside the original circle.”
“What did you say?”
“No.”
“Was that true?”
“At the time.”
Maya touched the ring.
Eleven years.
Richard had met her eight years ago.
Married her six years ago.
Something uncomfortable formed in her mind.
She pushed it aside until she had evidence.
“What did the orchid marker actually mean?”
Julian leaned back.
“When Eleanor believed somebody inside the crew might betray her, she separated information. No one person held everything. The orchid meant the person carrying it had been entrusted with something another person would eventually need.”
“What did she entrust me with?”
“That’s what I don’t understand.”
Maya remembered Eleanor’s apartment.
The old accounting office.
The boxes Maya had helped close.
The silver chain.
The ring.
Nothing else.
Then she remembered one detail.
On Eleanor’s final night in the office, she had asked Maya to mail three envelopes.
Maya had never looked inside.
“Julian.”
He waited.
“Did Eleanor ever use a florist on Ashland Avenue?”
Julian’s face changed.
“Yes.”
“Her accounting office was above it.”
“I know.”
Maya stared at him.
“You knew where she was?”
“For years.”
“You told everyone she disappeared.”
“She wanted it that way.”
Anger moved through Maya.
“You let a nineteen-year-old girl take care of a dying woman while all of you pretended she didn’t exist?”
Julian accepted the accusation.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone close to Eleanor became a target.”
Maya looked down at the ring.
“And then she gave the target to me.”
Julian’s expression hardened.
“No.”
“What?”
“She gave you protection.”
Maya laughed without humor.
“From whom?”
Before Julian could answer, a crash came from the morning room.
Anthony opened the library door.
Vanessa was standing in the hallway.
One bodyguard held her arm.
May you like
A broken phone lay behind her.
She had been trying to destroy it.
