Chapter 7 - THE KEY TO THE STUDIO
Resting in the center of Grace’s pale palm was not a toy, a ribbon, or a piece of candy.
It was a small, tarnished brass key, attached to a faded red ribbon that had been frayed at the edges. Stamped into the brass was a single serial number: P-114.
Harrison recognized it instantly.
It was the private deadbolt key to the secondary French doors of the estate’s detached pool house—the rear entrance that led through the rose garden, the entrance that had supposedly been bolted from the inside on the night of the fire.
The Chicago police report had stated unequivocally that both doors had been locked from within, corroborating the theory that Eleanor had been alone in her studio when the kiln malfunctioned, succumbing to carbon monoxide before the flames ever reached the structure.
Yet here, sitting in the hand of a six-year-old girl in a restaurant on the Gold Coast, was the key.
“Where did you get this, Grace?” Harrison whispered, his voice trembling so violently that the ice in his mineral water glass rattled against the crystal.
Grace looked down at the brass key. Her small fingers gently closed around it once more, pressing the cool metal against her palm.
“Mommy gave it to me,” Grace said softly, her words coming with a steady, rhythmic clarity that sounded like a story she had rehearsed a thousand times in the dark. “She put me in the big wardrobe behind the canvases. She told me to lock the wardrobe door and stay very, very quiet. She told me to make myself into a little bird and hide in the nest.”
Harrison felt the air leave his lungs. His vision flared with red, a cold, sickening horror gripping his stomach.
Eleanor had hidden her.
“Why, Grace?” Harrison asked, leaning forward, his large, scarred hand gently covering hers, his thumb stroking her small knuckles. “Why did Mommy put you in the wardrobe?”
“Because the man with the yellow coat came,” Grace whispered.
Clare gasped softly, her hand flying to her collar, her eyes darting between the father and the child.
“What man, sweetheart?” Harrison pressed, his baritone dropping into a terrifying, lethal register, the instinct of a hunter awakening behind his grief. “Did you see his face?”
Grace shook her head slowly, her blue bow swaying against her curls.
“No. He had a hat on. But he was shouting at Mommy,” Grace said, her lower lip quivering slightly, her pale-blue eyes filling with the memory. “He was shouting about the ships. He said Daddy was taking too much from the canal. He said Daddy had to pay the tax, or the fire would start.”
Harrison’s jaw locked with enough force to crack bone.
The canal.
Two years ago, Harrison had expanded Cole Maritime Logistics into the Calumet River corridor, undercutting the entrenched, corrupt river pilots' union and their backing syndicates. There had been threats—vague, cowardly letters delivered to his downtown offices—which he had dismissed with characteristic arrogance, believing his private security rendered his family untouchable.
He had never imagined they would bypass the main house. He had never imagined they would slip through the rear garden to the pool house.
“Mommy was crying,” Grace continued, a single tear finally breaking over her lashes, carving a clean, pale line down her rosy cheek. “She gave me the key through the crack in the wardrobe. She told me that no matter what I heard, I couldn't come out until Daddy came home. And then… then the man spilled the cans on the floor. It smelled like the lawnmower.”
May you like
Grace looked up at Harrison, her voice breaking into a tiny, heartbroken sob.
“I didn't knock over Hannah’s drink, Daddy,” Grace wept softly, her small frame beginning to shake. “Hannah said I was bad because I didn't want her to clean Mommy’s vanity. She wanted to throw away Mommy’s yellow brushes. And when I tried to stop her, she told me Mommy was dead because I didn't pray hard enough. She said Mommy died because God needed good people, and I was bad.”
