Chapter 16: Behind the Time Clock

Hazel's POV

The shop was on the east end of Calumet Street, between a closed laundromat and a lot full of weeds.

I had not seen it in nine years.

The sign over the door still said BRENNAN TOOL AND DIE in my father's block letters, with the second N half gone.

A yellow excavator stood in the street with its engine idling.

Two men in hard hats were unrolling orange fencing along the curb.

Gavin got out of the car before it stopped.

"Stop work," he said to the man with the clipboard. "I'm the chairman of Prescott Holdings."

"I got a permit," the foreman said, and showed him. "It's signed by the property owner."

"The property owner is my father."

"Then you two can take it up Monday. I'm paid till midnight."

I didn't wait for the rest.

My mother had told me where to look, in the kitchen, with Ruby holding her hand and her braid half undone.

"Behind the time clock," she'd said. "Third brick from the floor. He put it back the day he was sick, in case. I never touched it."

"Mama, what's in it?"

"The truth he wouldn't leave in a lunch tin where a man like Prescott could find it."

I ran to the side door of the shop.

It was chained with a padlock the size of my fist.

Behind me the foreman said, "Lady, you can't go in there."

I took the tire iron from the trunk of Gavin's car and hit the padlock until the hasp broke.

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