My Ex's Uncle, My Trap novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Pinwheel Lock

The dean walked away between the tables, and every head in the room turned to watch him go.

Then they turned to watch me.

I put my fork down very carefully, so it wouldn't ring again.

"He can't do that," I said. "Chair the panel that judges his own son's project. Chair my hearing. Both."

"He can," Pierson said. "It's his building. It's always been his building."

"You said that like you know."

He signed the check without looking at it.

"Not here," he said. "Somewhere he doesn't own."

There was exactly one place in Pittsburgh I was sure Clifford Wardell didn't own.

Lock & Key closed at ten on Tuesdays.

By the time we got there, Dakota had already locked up and gone home, and the warehouse was dark except for the exit signs.

I let us in through the loading door with my own key.

The workshop was in the back, behind The Locksmith's Daughter. One long bench, a drill press, a band saw, and my father's tool roll hanging on a nail.

I turned on the lamp over the bench and sat on it, still in my cousin's wedding dress.

"Okay," I said. "Nobody owns this. Talk."

He didn't sit. He walked along the wall, looking at the half-built props on the shelves.

A brass compass with no needle. A music box that only played backward.

"You know the case in the atrium," he said. "The one with the old lock in it."

"The Pinwheel prototype. Everybody knows it. Freshmen touch the glass for luck before finals."

"I built it."

I laughed, because I thought it was a joke.

He didn't laugh.

"I was twenty-one," he said. "A senior. Cliff was forty-two and ran the lab I worked in."

"The patent's in his name. It says so on the plaque."

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