Chapter 8 - The Woman in the Hallway.
Leah sent an assistant out the front entrance carrying Claire's duffel bag while Claire and Sophie left through the parking garage with another attorney.
The private investigator followed the decoy car.
For the first time since the birthday dinner, Claire felt one step ahead of Eleanor.
It lasted nineteen minutes.
At Saint Gabriel's bus station, locker seventeen was empty.
No recorder.
No documents.
No note.
Only a strip of blue painter's tape stuck to the metal door.
Claire stared at it.
"She got here first."
Leah checked the lock.
"Or Rosa moved whatever was inside."
A woman sweeping the hallway glanced toward them.
She was short, wore a gray coat despite the summer heat, and kept her face turned away.
Claire recognized her hands before she recognized her face.
"Rosa?"
The broom stopped.
The woman looked up.
Rosa Alvarez seemed to have aged ten years in three weeks.
"You shouldn't be here," she whispered.
Claire crossed the hallway.
"Neither should you."
Rosa looked at Sophie and began to cry.
Sophie reached toward her.
"Miss Rosa."
Rosa hugged the child carefully.
"Mi niña."
Leah guided them into a quiet waiting room.
Rosa refused to sit near the window.
She said Eleanor had fired her the night she found the recorder.
She had not moved to Arizona.
She had been staying with cousins and changing locations every few days because Eleanor's attorney threatened to sue her for theft, breach of confidentiality, and defamation.
"What was in the locker?" Leah asked.
Rosa looked at Claire.
"Copies."
"Of what?"
"Papers from Mr. Whitmore's study."
Claire knew she meant Eleanor's late husband, Thomas Whitmore.
Thomas had died eighteen months earlier after a stroke.
He had been the only person in the family Eleanor occasionally seemed to fear.
Rosa opened her purse and removed a folded photograph.
It showed a page from the trust summary Adam had found.
A handwritten note in Thomas's distinctive block letters filled the margin.
SOPHIE'S SHARES MUST NEVER BE USED TO FORCE CLAIRE OR ADAM INTO A BOARD VOTE.
Claire read it twice.
Rosa handed her a second photograph.
This one showed a board memorandum.
Eleanor needed 50.1 percent of voting control to remain chair.
Without Sophie's proxy, she had 47.6.
With it, she would have 52.4.
"She needs my daughter to keep her company."
Rosa shook her head.
"She needs control of your daughter."
The correction was worse.
Leah asked when Rosa first realized what Eleanor was doing.
"When she made the red room."
Claire's eyes lifted.
"Made it?"
"It was storage before."
Rosa's face tightened.
"She put a chair inside."
Claire went cold.
"For Sophie?"
Rosa nodded.
"And a little camera on a tripod."
Sophie pressed closer to Claire.
Rosa continued quietly.
"Mrs. Whitmore would tell her stories."
"What stories?"
"That Mommy shouted."
"That Mommy broke things."
"That Mommy left her alone."
"Then she would ask Sophie to repeat the stories on video."
Claire could barely speak.
"How many times?"
"I saw four."
Leah wrote everything down.
"Did Adam see any?"
Rosa's eyes moved to the floor.
Claire already knew the answer before Rosa spoke.
"Yes."
"How many?"
"At least two."
Claire's throat tightened.
"Did he stop her?"
Rosa took a long breath.
"Once."
Hope rose in Claire before she could stop it.
"What happened?"
"He opened the red door and carried Sophie out."
Claire closed her eyes.
"Then what?"
Rosa looked miserable.
"Mrs. Whitmore took him into the study."
"He came out twenty minutes later."
"And he brought Sophie back."
Claire felt something inside her collapse.
Leah asked the question Claire could not.
"Why?"
Rosa reached into her purse again.
This time she removed a photocopy of Adam's signed affidavit.
At the top was a date.
One month earlier.
At the bottom, beneath Adam's signature, Eleanor had written a sentence by hand.
ONE MORE INCIDENT AND WE FILE.
Claire stared at it.
Rosa touched her wrist.
"Claire."
"There's more."
Claire looked up.
May you like
Rosa's voice dropped.
"The birthday dinner was supposed to create that incident."
