Chapter 19: Two Pethicks

Leopold sent the guests home with an apology about a bride's nerves.

He did it from the front steps, with an arm around each of us.

Every car in the drive pulled away with its headlights down.

Then he walked us up the stairs himself.

The man in the dark suit followed.

The study was on the east side of the second floor.

It was a warm room with green walls and a fire that someone had laid that afternoon.

Behind the shelf of bound ledgers, the safe door hung open on an empty black box.

"Sit," Leopold said.

We sat on the leather sofa, shoulder to shoulder, the same haircut, the same strip of tape.

He turned a key in the study door and put it in his pocket.

"It's such a pleasure," he said, "to see you both in one room."

"Where is it?" Dinah said.

"The ledger? On my desk, in the second drawer, where it has been for three weeks."

He opened the drawer.

He took out a long gray book, rubbed at the corners, and set it on the blotter between his hands.

"I moved it the day you started asking Elias questions, Dinah."

"You were so careful. It took you eighteen years to be that careful."

"And you still sent a man with a camera over my door."

"You knew about the camera?"

"I've known about everything." He smiled at her. "I've known about you since you were nine."

I felt Dinah go still beside me.

"You heard me on the phone that morning," Leopold said. "Do you think I didn't see your little shoes under the stall door?"

Keep reading free with an account. Start She Took the Rags, I Took the Empire from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.