Chapter 8: Elevator

We got back to Bridgeport at four that afternoon, and Pearl's door stood open an inch.

I smelled it before I saw it, the cold smell of strangers' hands.

The yellow table was on its side.

Every cupboard hung open, and flour covered the floor in a pale drift where someone had slit the bag.

The mattress in my little room was cut open, and the stuffing lay out of it in lumps.

Pearl stood in the middle of her own kitchen with her handbag clutched against her chest.

"I took the tin to the grave," she said, in a small voice. "Thank God. I never take that tin anywhere."

"Pearl."

"They did all this looking for it."

I put my arm around her, and she was shaking harder than I'd ever felt her shake.

Anson crouched by the splintered doorframe and ran his thumb along the lock.

"No force on the lock," he said. "Whoever it was had a key."

"The landlord?"

"The landlord got a call this morning from a law office, and he gave them one." He stood. "This place is finished for you tonight."

"I have a sister in Stratford," Pearl said. "I can go to her."

"Go," I said. "Please. Take the tin."

She gripped my wrist. "And you?"

"I'll be fine."

"You say that the way your father says things," Pearl said sharply, and then clapped her hand over her mouth.

"He's not my father," I said.

"No," she said. "I'm sorry, no. He isn't."

We drove her to Stratford, and I watched her go up her sister's front steps with the tin under her arm.

Then Anson turned the car north, toward the water.

"I own a hotel on the harbor," he said. "It has a suite on the top floor that nobody uses."

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