Chapter 11 - The Man in Our Father's Grave
The woman who had waited sixteen years for Samuel Reed to come home lived above a laundromat across town.
Nina Reed opened her door on a chain. She was seventy now, with silver braids and a look that said she'd learned not to trust strangers carrying sympathy.
“My husband's dead?” she asked when Mara showed her badge.
Mara hesitated. “We believe he died in the mill fire.”
Nina unhooked the chain and let us in. She didn't sit down.
“Police told me Samuel ran away,” she said. “His boss told me he stole company money. Nobody would let me see the security recordings.”
“His boss was my father,” I said.
She looked straight at me. “Then you need to hear what he sent before he disappeared.”
From a sewing tin she took a cassette tape in a cracked plastic case. Samuel had mailed it to her on the morning of the fire. Nina had given a copy to the police years ago. They claimed the recording was too damaged to use.
Mara found an old player in a closet. Samuel's voice came through the hiss.
“If anything happens to me, look behind the flood-control panel. Hale's been moving money through the cleanup contracts. There are barrels under the mill, and they're not empty.”
A door slammed on the recording. A second voice said, “You should've taken the payoff, Sam.”
My father's voice.
Nina stood very still. Then she asked whether the body buried in his name could be Samuel's.
“I think so,” I said.
For sixteen years she'd been denied even a grave to visit.
“We'll find out,” Mara promised. “We'll do it properly.”
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A rock struck the window. Glass burst across the kitchen floor.
Wrapped around the rock was a note: THE NEXT BODY WON'T BE A MISTAKE.
