Chapter 5 - The Cabinet They Emptied
Nothing had been taken from the children’s reading room.
The tablets remained in their charging station.
The donation box still held seventy-three dollars.
Whoever had broken in knew where to go.
Maren stood behind the police tape while the center’s director, Mrs. Alvarez, pressed a paper cup of tea into her hand.
“Sit down, sweetheart.”
“I’m fine.”
“You can be fine in a chair.”
Maren sat.
The plain kindness nearly brought her to tears.
An officer asked when she had last accessed the archive cabinet.
“Tuesday. I needed an old property tax statement.”
“What else was stored there?”
“Building records. Former tenant files. Freight receipts from before the center opened.”
“Anyone recently ask about them?”
Maren looked at the broken door.
“Yes.”
She gave Elise’s number, then Gideon’s.
She did not leave out Adrian Pike.
An hour later, Gideon arrived.
He stopped several feet away, waiting for her to acknowledge him.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He looked at the building.
“Was anyone inside?”
“The cleaner had already left.”
His shoulders eased slightly.
Then he looked back at her.
“I can arrange temporary space for the programs.”
“Mrs. Alvarez is already speaking with the church across the street.”
“Then I can cover repairs.”
“You can make a donation through the center. No conditions.”
“All right.”
The absence of argument almost made her cry again.
They stood together while an officer photographed the damaged lock.
Finally, Gideon said, “I’m giving everything we have to outside investigators.”
Maren turned.
“Everything?”
“Yes.”
“Including anything that implicates your family?”
“Including anything that implicates me.”
She studied him.
For years, he had drawn a boundary between his legitimate businesses and the arrangements he preferred not to discuss. She had accepted too much because she loved him and because looking closely threatened the life they had built.
“What would they find about you?”
“Payments I approved without asking enough questions. Men I protected because they were loyal. Problems I handled privately that should have been reported.”
He did not look away.
“I didn’t kill Theo. I didn’t order threats against you. But that doesn’t make every decision I’ve made clean.”
Maren felt something heavier than fear.
Grief, perhaps, for the version of him she had helped preserve.
“Then tell the truth.”
“I will.”
Her phone rang.
Mrs. Alvarez was standing just inside the building, waving her toward the entrance.
“I remembered something,” the older woman said when Maren reached her.
Three years earlier, a burst pipe had soaked several archive boxes. Maren had paid a college student to scan the surviving records before returning the originals to storage.
The digital copies had been placed on an external drive.
Maren remembered the student.
His terrible coffee.
The blue sticky notes covering her desk.
But where had she put the drive?
“The fire safe,” she said.
Mrs. Alvarez shook her head.
“We replaced that last year.”
Then Maren remembered.
A shoebox.
Christmas decorations.
Nora’s attic.
She had taken the drive home temporarily during the renovation and packed it with other things when she first began staying with her sister.
She stared at Mrs. Alvarez.
“They took the originals.”
“Yes.”
“They didn’t know about the copies.”
That afternoon, Elise arranged for the drive to be preserved and examined properly.
Maren did not plug it into her own laptop.
She had learned enough to know that finding evidence and handling it correctly were different responsibilities.
By evening, the first review produced a name.
Harbor Nine Logistics.
A company that appeared repeatedly in old freight records.
Its registered contact was Adrian Pike.
Gideon stood in Elise’s office when she told them.
For a moment, he looked like someone had struck him.
“Adrian represented Theo,” he said.
Elise nodded.
“He also drafted your divorce settlement.”
Maren looked at the copies on the desk.
The final page.
The broad records clause.
The transfer nobody had explained.
“He wanted the documents assigned to me,” she said. “Then he wanted them gone.”
Nobody contradicted her.
Outside the office windows, evening traffic moved through Chicago.
Inside, Gideon took out his phone and turned it off.
May you like
For the first time in his life, he did not call a man who owed him a favor.
He asked Elise who should be notified.
