Chapter 6 - The Name My Father Found Behind the Second Clock Face
My father was alive, but that did not mean the nightmare was over. He had been held for days in a rented house outside Chicago, moved twice, and threatened whenever he asked to call me. Doctors found dehydration and bruising but no life-threatening injuries. I flew to see him only after his physician said he could receive visitors.
When I entered his hospital room, he tried to stand.
"Don't you dare," I said, crossing the floor.
He laughed, then cried against my shoulder.
"I thought I would never see you again."
"I'm here."
I held him until the years I had spent trying to be strong dissolved into the simple relief of hearing his heartbeat.
Tony waited outside. He had offered to come, and I had accepted, but he understood this first reunion belonged to my father and me.
Later, Dad told us about the clock. Charles Vance had hired him to restore a rare mechanism whose concealed second face was intended to record a separate time zone. During the repair, Dad found a tiny compartment containing a strip of microfilm and a handwritten list of names. He had not understood its significance until a bank employee warned him to forget what he'd seen.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.
"Because I was frightened. I thought if I kept quiet, they'd leave you alone."
"They didn't."
He nodded, ashamed. "I know."
Dad had copied one name before returning the film to its compartment: Rebecca Moretti.
Tony stiffened. "My mother?"
Dad nodded. "Her name was beside a payment labeled protection. But there was a second notation. Witness—do not release."
Tony's mother had died when he was twenty-one. He had been told it was a sudden illness. She had loved literature, written notes in the margins of novels, and tried to keep her son away from his father's violent business. I had seen her photograph in the estate library: dark eyes, gentle smile, a blue scarf around her shoulders.
"My mother was a witness to something?" Tony asked.
"I don't know," Dad said. "But somebody was paying to keep her silent."
Evelyn asked permission to photograph Dad's notes and share them with investigators. He agreed. He also told us that Vinnie had repeatedly demanded the location of the key. Dad had refused to say where it was because he no longer possessed it.
"Then who does?" I asked.
"The person who told me the truth about the clock."
He took a shaky breath.
"Alice Reed."
The former archivist had told us the compartment was empty. Had she removed the film? Had she been protecting it, or helping the Vances?
Evelyn called her immediately. No answer. Her office number had been disconnected. Her apartment was empty when police checked later that afternoon.
"She ran," I said.
"Or someone frightened her," Evelyn replied.
I was learning how often both possibilities existed at once.
Meanwhile, the New Year's Eve incident had exploded across the news. Clips showed Lana accusing me of being ignorant and then staring in horror when I pointed out the ledger's impossible dates. Reporters called me the maid who exposed a banking dynasty. I hated the label. I was a teacher, a daughter, and a woman who had survived an assault. I had never wanted to become anybody's symbol.
Tony called from the hallway that evening.
"There's a reporter asking whether we're together," he said. "I told him your private life is yours."
"Thank you."
"May I ask you something that isn't about the case?"
"Yes."
"When your father is better, would you have dinner with me? Not as my employee. As someone I'd like to know."
I looked through the glass at Dad, asleep beneath a pale hospital blanket.
"I think I'd like that," I said. "But first I need to resign from the estate."
Tony was silent.
"I don't want my job and my feelings tangled together," I explained. "I need to know I can walk away without losing my paycheck."
"Then we'll arrange your final wages and benefits through payroll, exactly as you're owed. No strings."
I smiled. "You're learning."
"From a very good teacher."
After we hung up, I opened the small bag of personal belongings the hospital had returned to Dad. Inside was his broken watch chain and a folded piece of paper. It wasn't a note from Vinnie. It was a receipt from the restoration company, dated two years earlier.
Across the bottom Dad had written a single line:
THE WOMAN IN THE BLUE SCARF DID NOT DIE WHEN THEY SAID SHE DID.
May you like
I read it three times.
Then I called Tony back.
