Chapter 3 - The Girl Behind the Locked Door
"Graham asked for me? By name?" I said.
Evelyn nodded. "He said you were good in emergencies. I thought it was odd."
I'd barely met Graham. Yet he knew my old job. His silence during the kick troubled me.
Pike's footsteps echoed from the ballroom. Evelyn stepped aside, leaving the service elevator open for me. Instead I took the stairs down to the catering floor. June always went there when she needed to think. The old pastry pantry had no windows and an unreliable lock.
I found her yellow hair clip under the push bar. There was a fresh scratch in the paint at knee height, and the pantry door had been pulled shut from outside.
"June?" I called softly.
A scrape. Then a voice: "Don't open it if he's there."
I glanced down the empty hall. "He isn't."
I used the emergency release beside the frame, a simple latch every cleaner knew. June was crouched behind sacks of flour, clutching an empty blue folder. Her hands shook so badly the paper inside rattled.
"He took the originals," she whispered. "Pike took them."
"What originals?"
"The tenant votes. They say we agreed to leave Oak Point. Forty-four signatures. My mom signed nothing. Neither did anyone on our floor."
Homeward Key was advertising Oak Point as the place donors would save. June was telling me its residents had already been signed away.
"Why tell me?" I asked.
"Because you pulled that delivery driver off the loading ramp when his truck slid. You didn't ask who he was. You just moved."
I remembered the icy January morning. I hadn't known anyone noticed.
June held up her phone, showing a grainy photograph of a document. Across the top were the words COMMUNITY APPROVAL - FINAL.
May you like
Beneath them was a printed name that made me stop breathing.
Graham Vale.
