The Mole in His Bed novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Memorial

Cora's POV

Judith's office was dark when we got there, and her safe stood wide open.

The second copy of the recordings was gone. Nothing else had been touched.

"Nobody has the combination but me," Judith said. "And nobody walked past the fourth-floor desk without signing."

"Who was on the desk?"

"The same man who stamped your mother's transfer order."

Neil stood at her window with his sling dark against the dawn.

"She doesn't need the tape," he said quietly. "She needs us not to have it."

"Then Crane's lawyer," I said.

Judith dialed him four times before it rang through to a recording.

"His client has two more copies," she said, "and I've no idea where either one is. He said he'd bring it himself today, in person."

"Will he?"

"Crane was very clear about wanting his front row."

At eleven o'clock we stood at the back of the Pier Nine wall.

There were four thousand people there, and the folding chairs had been set out in rows under a white tent.

Flags hung at half staff along the length of the pier, and the fog had gone gray and thin.

Winnie sat in the third row between the Captain's widow and a woman in a black veil.

She had put on her church hat, which she hadn't worn in five years.

I had asked her not to come.

She had told me she would sit where she liked.

Two marshals brought Crane in a few minutes before the speeches.

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