Chapter 14: Mr. Conway's Driver

"The man had a Werner Holdings jacket and a van," the caretaker said. "He gave me five hundred dollars and told me Mrs. Werner wanted it quiet."

He was crying a little.

I took the envelope from him with two fingers, because it was evidence, and because I didn't want to touch it.

"Will you say that to a judge?" I said.

"I'll say it to anybody."

Jerome drove me back at dawn, and I sat on the far side of the seat with my arms folded.

"I'm not forgiving you," I said. "I'm using you. Where is the proof of who gave the order?"

He kept his eyes on the road.

"My father wired the house line in the nineties," he said. "Every call in the study goes to a recorder in the cabinet. Odile never took it out."

"How do you know?"

"I grew up in that house. The passcode is my birthday. She never changed it."

That should have softened me, and it didn't.

"Then we go in," I said.

Odile had a standing appointment at the salon on Saturday mornings, he said. We had until ten.

At the gate of a brick house with white columns, a guard leaned into Jerome's window.

"Name?"

"Mr. Conway's driver," Jerome said. "I've brought Mrs. Conway for the fitting."

The gate opened.

I turned in my seat and stared at him.

"It's four minutes," he said, low. "They were told to expect Mrs. Conway."

"No names that aren't ours."

"Maisie."

"You said it. You said the rule, and you said it in a kitchen with my father's casserole in the fridge."

He parked. He didn't answer.

A housekeeper let us in and said the seamstress was upstairs, and that Mrs. Werner was out.

The moment she turned her back, Jerome took my wrist and led me down a hall of family photographs.