Chapter 17: The Man in Evanston

Preston's text came at noon on Tuesday.

Preston: She caught me at the desk. She watched me put the key back and walked me to the door. She said nothing, and her hands were shaking.

I read it twice at Elias's window with the river going gray below.

Helen had found him with the drawer open and had not raised her voice.

That frightened me more than a scene would have.

"She's cleaned it out already," Elias said from the desk. "Which means the paper isn't the only copy that worries her."

"The man who signed for the landlord," I said.

I took out the eight-page lease and turned to the last sheet.

Under my father's blue signature was a second, in black ink, and a printed line: Managing Agent.

"He ran the Ravenswood buildings for the Lowell holding company for nineteen years," I said. "He retired the month my father died."

"I had my investigator find him last night," Elias said. "He lives in Evanston, on a street with a lot of oaks."

He wrote the address on the back of a hotel card and slid it across.

"I'll drive you."

"I'll go alone."

"Lydia."

"He signed that lease. If a Colquitt drives up in a black coat, he'll shut the door."

He looked at me for a while.

"Then take a car I can track," he said. "And call when you're through his door."

The house was small and brick, with a plastic reindeer on the lawn.

The man who opened the door was seventy-four, thin, in a cardigan, with a tube of oxygen over his ears.

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