Chapter 15
I read the final sentence until the words blurred.
Do not trust the person who tells you he discovered this before you did.
Margaret sat across from me, her hands folded tightly over the leather file box.
“What did she mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Eleanor never explained the letter. She only told me to keep it with the company records and release it if you asked about Vance Family Ventures.”
“Did she know someone might try to use it?”
“She believed every safeguard should have a reason. That was how your mother thought.”
I looked down at the brass key resting in my palm. It was small, old-fashioned, and stamped with a number.
Daniel studied the account number on the letter. “This may correspond to a safe-deposit box rather than a bank account.”
Margaret nodded slowly. “That number looks familiar.”
“Where?”
“Federal Trust, on Devonshire Street. Eleanor kept several boxes there.”
I knew the building. My mother had taken me there once when I was young, though I had remembered only the polished brass doors and the way she had told me to wait in the lobby while she handled a private matter upstairs.
“Are the boxes still active?” I asked.
“One was transferred to you after her death,” Margaret said. “But I thought the others had been closed.”
“Then we’ll go there now.”
Priya glanced at the time. “It’s nearly midnight.”
“I know.”
She considered arguing, then simply reached for her coat. “I’ll come with you.”
Margaret stood as well. “So will I.”
Daniel gathered the documents. “I’ll notify the bank’s legal department that we may have a disputed account. But Nora, we should be prepared for the possibility that the box contains nothing useful.”
“I’m prepared.”
That was not entirely true. I was prepared for forged documents, concealed accounts, and evidence that Julian had betrayed me in ways I had not yet imagined.
I was not prepared to find another piece of my mother waiting inside a locked box.
The city had grown quiet by the time we reached Devonshire Street. Snow covered the sidewalks and softened the sharp edges of the buildings. Federal Trust’s lobby was closed, but Margaret called the branch manager, who lived nearby and agreed to meet us.
His name was Arthur Bellamy. He arrived ten minutes later in a navy overcoat, his gray hair still damp from the snow.