Chapter 4 - The Woman in the Photograph
The door opened three inches.
Daniel stepped back.
A uniformed courthouse officer appeared.
“Mr. DeLuca?”
Matteo remained between June and the doorway.
“Yes?”
“There’s a woman downstairs asking for Mrs. DeLuca.”
June disliked hearing the name.
“What woman?”
“She wouldn’t give her name.”
Matteo’s expression turned cold.
“She leaves.”
The officer hesitated.
“She said to tell you Elena sent her.”
Silence.
June watched Matteo.
For the first time since she had met him, he looked shaken.
Not angry.
Not calculating.
Shaken.
“I’m going downstairs,” June said.
“No.”
“You don’t get to say no every time something becomes uncomfortable.”
“This is not uncomfortable.”
“What is it?”
“Dangerous.”
“Apparently so is standing near you.”
The words hurt him.
June saw it.
She almost apologized.
Then remembered the photograph.
The envelope.
The dead fiancée he had failed to mention.
No.
He could survive honesty.
They took a private elevator downstairs.
Four of Matteo’s security men joined them.
June hated that she was beginning to recognize them.
The woman waited near the employee entrance.
She was perhaps sixty.
Thin.
Gray hair.
Dark coat despite the mild morning.
She held an old leather handbag against her chest.
When she saw Matteo, she stopped breathing.
“You look like your father.”
Matteo’s face hardened.
“Who are you?”
The woman looked at June.
“You married him.”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re already late.”
June stepped forward.
“Late for what?”
The woman opened her handbag.
Every security man moved.
She froze.
“Please.”
Matteo lifted one hand.
His men stopped.
The woman removed a small key.
Nothing else.
She held it toward June.
“Elena gave me this two days before she died.”
Matteo’s voice became rough.
“You knew Elena?”
“I cleaned the offices at DeLuca Shipping.”
“What is your name?”
“Margaret Hale.”
Matteo looked toward Daniel.
Daniel shook his head slightly.
He did not recognize her.
Margaret continued.
“Elena came to me because nobody noticed cleaning women.”
June understood immediately.
“That made you safe.”
Margaret smiled sadly.
“For a while.”
She pushed the key into June’s palm.
A brass tag hung from it.
“What does it open?”
“Locker at Newark Penn Station.”
Matteo stepped closer.
“Why now?”
Margaret looked at him.
“Because yesterday someone found me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did they say?”
Her face tightened.
“They said the new bride was repeating Elena’s mistakes.”
June felt cold.
“What mistakes?”
“Asking where the money went.”
June looked at Matteo.
He looked genuinely confused.
“What money?”
Margaret’s eyes sharpened.
“You don’t know.”
“No.”
“That’s why she loved you.”
June turned toward him.
Matteo did not react.
Margaret looked back at June.
“Elena discovered that someone inside the DeLuca businesses had been moving money through legal settlements, shell companies, and courthouse liens. She believed the records were hidden inside legitimate filings.”
June’s mind began working automatically.
“Property records?”
“Some.”
“Civil judgments?”
“Yes.”
“Divorce cases?”
Margaret nodded.
June looked at the four petitions she had received in her imagination.
Same paper.
Same formatting.
Maybe not merely threats.
Maybe references.
Matteo said, “Why divorce documents?”
“I don’t know.”
Margaret swallowed.
“Elena said if anything happened to her, the pattern would start again when somebody threatened the person behind it.”
June whispered, “And our marriage threatens them.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Margaret looked directly at Matteo.
“Because when you take control under your grandfather’s trust, you gain access to the internal ledgers.”
Everything clicked at once.
This was not about June being socially unacceptable.
It might not even be about the marriage itself.
Someone needed Matteo unmarried.
Powerless.
Locked out.
June curled her fingers around the key.
“Then whoever sent the papers doesn’t just want me gone.”
Matteo answered.
“They want the trust to fail.”
Margaret nodded.
“And Elena died because she discovered why.”
A vehicle squealed outside.
Matteo turned.
Margaret’s expression changed.
“No.”
A black sedan accelerated toward the curb.
One of Matteo’s guards shouted.
Everything happened at once.
Matteo pulled June behind a concrete pillar.
A window lowered.
No gun appeared.
Instead, a package flew from the car and struck the pavement.
The sedan disappeared into traffic.
Matteo’s men chased.
Margaret was shaking.
June looked at the package.
Cream envelope.
Again.
Matteo stopped her before she touched it.
One guard opened it carefully.
Inside was a train-station locker receipt.
Locker 317.
And a handwritten note.
YOU HAVE UNTIL MIDNIGHT.
Matteo took June’s arm.
“You’re going to my house.”
“No.”
“This is not negotiable.”
“You need someone who understands court records.”
“I have attorneys.”
“You have attorneys who missed this for eight years.”
Daniel winced.
“Fair.”
Matteo glared at him.
June stepped closer.
“You chose a courthouse clerk because I fit a clause.”
“Yes.”
“Congratulations. Now I’m useful for another reason.”
“You could be killed.”
“So could you.”
“That is different.”
“Why?”
He stared at her.
The answer seemed to anger him.
Because he did not have one.
Or because he did.
“June.”
She lowered her voice.
“If Elena left something in that locker and someone waited eight years for your marriage to retrieve it, we need to know what it is.”
Matteo’s gaze dropped to her hand.
The wedding ring looked strange there.
Temporary.
Contractual.
Yet suddenly far more dangerous than either had planned.
“Fine,” he said.
June nodded.
“But you stay beside me.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“That sounded almost husband-like.”
“Don’t get accustomed.”
They reached Newark Penn Station at noon.
Security swept the locker area.
No obvious threat.
Locker 317 stood near the end of a narrow row.
June inserted the key.
It turned.
Matteo positioned himself beside her.
“Open it slowly.”
June pulled the metal door.
Inside sat a small black ledger.
A cassette recorder.
And a red envelope with MATTEO written across it in Elena’s handwriting.
Matteo reached toward it.
Then June noticed something taped beneath the shelf.
A recent photograph.
Not eight years old.
Taken yesterday.
It showed Aunt Sofia meeting a man outside the courthouse.
June recognized the man immediately.
Her supervisor.
Mrs. Kaplan’s husband.
And beneath the photograph was one sentence.
THE CLERK’S OFFICE WAS NEVER RANDOM.
A sound came from behind them.
May you like
Someone had locked the outer locker-room door.
Then the lights went out.
