Chapter 13 - THE GHOST IN THE WARDROBE
The Valente estate on Sunday morning was quieter than a tomb. The mist had cleared, replaced by a pale, watery autumn sun that cast long, thin shadows across the gravel drive and the immaculate green lawns.
Dominic walked through the front doors without his overcoat, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows, revealing the faint, jagged white scar along his forearm—the souvenir of a knife fight in a South Philadelphia alleyway thirty-five years ago that Marco had stitched up himself with a curved sailmaker's needle and a bottle of cheap bourbon.
In the grand hall, the marble floor was spotless, polished to a high, cold gloss by the new maid who had arrived on Saturday afternoon from an agency in Media. She was older than Clara—a stout woman with graying hair named Mrs. Gately who moved with the silent efficiency of a clockwork automaton, dusting the bronze figurines without looking at them.
Dominic stopped outside his study door.
The small wooden chair sat in the corner where he had pushed it on Thursday evening. The front edge was worn smooth; the two back legs were scuffed pale. He reached out and touched the top rail with the flat of his palm. The wood was cold—no longer warm from the morning light that used to strike the hall window before Clara and the child vanished into the gray dawn.
He stepped into the study and closed the heavy oak door behind him.
The room smelled of old paper, leather, and the faint, lingering trace of peppermint oil that Marco always kept in his desk drawer. Dominic walked over to his mahogany desk. The crystal paperweight still held the child’s drawing of the tall man with no mouth down against the green blotter.
He pulled open the top drawer—the one where the drawing had first appeared.
It wasn't empty.
Lying right in the center of the cedar-lined bottom was a single, heavy brass key with a notched bitting and a small paper tag tied to the bow with a length of yellow thread. On the tag, written in Marco’s precise, sloping schoolteacher hand, were three numbers: 19-04-12.
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Dominic picked up the key. It was heavy, cool, and carried the faint tang of brass polish. He knew that bitting immediately. It was the key to the safety deposit box at the Commonwealth Trust and Savings branch on Broad Street—a box that was supposed to have been cleared out and closed down the day Dominic bought his first fleet of trucks in nineteen-eighty-five.
He didn't hesitate. He slipped the key into his vest pocket, turned on his heel, and walked out of the study without looking back at the desk, the chair, or the empty windows.
