Chương 4 - THE MAID WHO RAN
By noon, June Costello’s bare feet had become national news.
Not literally.
The national networks used a cropped version of the photograph.
But online, every detail was discussed as if a constitutional crisis depended on it.
Why was she carrying her shoes?
Why was Julian Cross in the window?
Why had she left alone?
Why had Rafe Costello not been seen?
Had the marriage ended?
Had a fight occurred?
Was Julian’s new film secretly a romance with June attached as producer?
One cable host spent six minutes discussing “the body language of betrayal” based on a still photograph in which June was squinting because a flash had hit her directly in the eyes.
Rafe watched none of it.
June watched too much.
By one o’clock, she had thrown the remote onto the sofa.
“This is insane.”
Rafe stood near the windows of their mansion study, reading call logs.
“Yes.”
“That woman on Channel Eight said I looked ‘post-intimate.’ What does that even mean?”
“I have no idea.”
“You’re not angry?”
He looked up.
“At the adjective?”
“At me.”
“No.”
“Not even a little?”
“No.”
June folded her arms.
“That should make me feel better.”
“It doesn’t?”
“It makes me wonder why you’re so calm.”
Rafe set the papers down.
“Would you prefer I break furniture?”
“No.”
“Threaten Cross?”
“No.”
“Call a newspaper and make the photographs disappear?”
“You can do that?”
“Not the point.”
June sighed.
Rafe came closer.
“I know you did not sleep with Julian Cross.”
“How?”
“Because I was in the room.”
Despite herself, she laughed.
It came out small and tired.
Rafe’s face softened for half a second.
Then his phone buzzed.
The moment vanished.
June turned away.
There it was again.
A phone.
A crisis.
A door closing.
Except this time Rafe silenced the call.
June looked back.
He put the phone facedown.
“You asked last night why I married you.”
Her humor disappeared.
“Yes.”
“I am going to answer.”
Before he could, Keane entered without knocking.
“Boss.”
Rafe’s eyes closed briefly.
June almost smiled at the irony.
Keane noticed.
“Bad timing?”
“Traditionally,” June said.
Keane ignored that.
“Elena is gone.”
June straightened.
“What?”
“She left the Bellamy with one of our cars at six ten. Driver took her to the mansion staff entrance. Camera shows her going inside. By seven, she was gone.”
“Maybe she went home.”
“She didn’t.”
Rafe picked up his phone.
“Family?”
“One brother in South Philly. Not there.”
June remembered Elena’s tears.
“She was scared of Gabriel.”
“Or scared of us,” Keane said.
June looked at him.
“She came to warn me.”
“She also admitted she told people about the clinic.”
“She didn’t know what she was doing.”
Keane’s expression remained neutral.
“Maybe.”
Rafe spoke before June could argue.
“Find her. Quietly. Nobody frightens her.”
Keane nodded.
June grabbed her coat.
Rafe looked at her.
“What are you doing?”
“Coming.”
“No.”
She stopped.
He heard it too.
The old word.
The old habit.
Rafe changed course.
“It may not be safe.”
“That was better.”
“June.”
“She trusted me enough to come to that hotel. If she sees six men in black coats, she’ll run farther.”
Keane said, “She has a point.”
Rafe looked at him.
Keane shrugged once.
“I dislike it too.”
Twenty minutes later, June was in the passenger seat of Rafe’s sedan wearing jeans, boots, and one of his sweaters under her coat because she had been too tired to search for her own.
Rain blurred the city.
Rafe drove himself.
He rarely did when security mattered.
June suspected he wanted the privacy.
For several blocks neither spoke.
Finally she said, “You were going to answer me.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you marry me?”
Rafe tightened his hands on the wheel.
“When I first learned your name, you were nineteen. Your father had just died.”
June looked out the window.
“I didn’t approach you then.”
“I would hope not.”
“I kept track of you because if your father had left evidence, the people responsible might believe he gave it to you.”
“You watched me.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Years.”
“That is not romantic.”
“I’m not trying to make it romantic.”
“Good.”
“At first, it was protection.”
“Without my permission.”
“Yes.”
She looked at him.
“And then?”
“The Franklin fundraiser.”
“What about it?”
“You spilled champagne on me.”
June stared.
“You stepped backward into my glass.”
“You blamed me.”
“You told me I looked like a man who had never survived an inconvenience.”
“You were being rude to the bartender.”
“He had stolen a guest’s watch.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I did.”
June remembered Rafe staring at her in shocked silence while she lectured him about manners.
She almost smiled.
“And that made you marry me?”
“No.”
“What did?”
Rafe stopped at a red light.
He looked at her.
“The next morning, I realized I wanted to see you again, and for the first time in years, it had nothing to do with your father.”
June’s throat tightened.
The light changed.
He drove.
“I should have told you the rest,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I was afraid if I did, every good thing between us would become evidence of something ugly.”
“You decided that for me.”
“Yes.”
“That’s the part I don’t forgive yet.”
“I know.”
Yet.
The word remained between them.
They found Elena’s brother, Mateo, above a closed bakery on Ninth Street.
He opened the door with a split lip and fear in his eyes.
When he saw Rafe, he nearly shut it again.
June put her hand out.
“Please. We’re looking for Elena.”
Mateo stared at her.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should my sister,” he said.
Rafe’s voice stayed calm.
“Where is she?”
Mateo laughed bitterly.
“You think I’m telling you?”
June stepped closer.
“Mateo, she came to me last night because she thought I was in danger. I am trying to do the same for her.”
He looked at June’s face for a long time.
Then his shoulders dropped.
“St. Agnes.”
The church sat four blocks away between a laundromat and an old rowhouse. They found Elena in the basement soup kitchen, sitting beneath a bulletin board advertising coat donations.
When she saw Rafe, she stood so quickly the chair fell over.
“No.”
June moved ahead of him.
“Elena.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No one is angry.”
Elena looked at Rafe as though that possibility had not occurred to her.
He stayed near the door.
June sat across from her.
“Tell me what happened.”
Elena rubbed both hands together.
“My brother owed money.”
“To whom?”
“A card room near Front Street. I didn’t know who owned it. Mr. Voss called me two weeks ago. He said he could erase the debt if I answered questions about the house.”
“What questions?”
“Your schedule. Mr. Costello’s schedule. Visitors. Deliveries.”
Rafe’s expression went stone-hard.
June kept her voice gentle.
“And the clinic envelope?”
“I never told him you were pregnant. I swear. I told Mrs. Halpern you had a medical letter. Mr. Voss guessed. Then yesterday he told me if I didn’t confirm it, Mateo would be hurt.”
June glanced toward Mateo, who stood near the stairs.
“Why did you run?”
“Because after the hotel, Mr. Voss sent me a picture of Mateo leaving work. He said next time it wouldn’t be a warning.”
Rafe spoke from the doorway.
“Did Voss send anything else?”
Elena looked at him.
“Yes.”
She reached inside her coat and removed a small silver key.
“I took this from his office.”
Rafe’s eyes narrowed.
“When?”
“Last week. He made me bring files downtown from the house. He kept going into a private cabinet. I thought maybe if I had proof of what he was doing, he couldn’t hurt my brother.”
She handed the key to June.
A number was stamped on it.
317.
June turned it over.
Nothing else.
Rafe stared at the number.
He knew it.
June saw that immediately.
“What?”
Rafe did not answer.
“Rafe.”
He looked at her.
“Thirty-one seven is not an office cabinet.”
“What is it?”
“A private storage room at Costello House.”
June closed her fingers around the key.
“What does Gabriel keep there?”
Rafe’s face was unreadable.
“He’s not supposed to keep anything there.”
Elena whispered, “There’s something else.”
June turned back.
Elena’s eyes filled again.
“The night before your wedding, Mr. Voss told someone on the phone that the marriage solved everything.”
June stopped breathing.
“Did he say what he meant?”
Elena shook her head.
“But he said your name.”
“And Rafe’s?”
“Yes.”
Rafe stepped forward.
“What exactly did he say?”
Elena swallowed.
She repeated the words carefully.
“Once June Marlow becomes a Costello, nobody will ever look in the right place again.”
The church basement went silent.
June looked at her husband.
Then down at the key in her hand.
Room 317.
A locked door in the Costello family office.
A secret Gabriel Voss had protected since before her wedding.
For the first time, June wondered whether her marriage had been hiding more than a lie.
May you like
Maybe it had been hiding evidence.
END OF CHAPTER 4
