Chapter 14: The Study at Midnight

The housekeeper opened the brownstone door before I knocked.

It was a quarter to midnight, and she looked at the folder under my arm and stepped aside without a word.

"The study," she said quietly. "All three of them."

I climbed the stairs I had grown up on.

Before I opened the study door I took out my phone, started the recorder, and slid it into my coat pocket.

Roland sat behind his desk with a glass of bourbon, and Chantal curled on the leather sofa in leggings and an oversized sweater.

Conrad stood at the window with his tie loosened.

"Joanna," Roland said. "Close the door. You look exhausted."

"I'm not."

"I'm sure Hawke has been telling you stories."

I crossed the room and laid the cream page on his blotter.

"Page one of four," I said. "That's the one I witnessed."

He didn't look down.

"And these are the nine pages that arrived at the insurer with my signature on the front."

I laid them next to it, one at a time.

The room stayed silent while the paper slid across the leather.

Chantal sat up.

"Daddy?"

"It's nothing, sweetheart."

"It's a four-page summary," I said, "and you swapped three of its pages for eight others. Then you put a dead man's company on top of my loop."

Roland picked up the cream page and read it slowly with his glasses on.

Then he started to laugh.

It was the warm laugh, the one that had filled every holiday of my teens, and it filled the study now.

"Oh, Joanna."

"Say it again."

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