Chapter 4
Marcus made bail.
Gregory Shaw disappeared.
Not dramatically.
No private jet.
No border crossing.
He simply failed to arrive at a board meeting Friday morning.
By noon, his phone was off.
By evening, federal investigators were involved.
Nathan froze his accounts.
Search warrants followed.
Then I received an email.
No sender name.
Only a subject line.
DANIEL’S LAST DISH.
Inside was an address.
And one sentence.
If you want to know why Marcus hired you, come alone.
Nathan said absolutely not.
I went anyway.
Not because I was brave.
Because grief had spent three years making decisions for me, and I was tired of letting other people decide what truths I was strong enough to hear.
The address led to an old storage facility south of downtown.
Unit 214 was unlocked.
Inside were boxes.
Dozens.
Hearth & Pine was printed on half of them.
My knees weakened.
Dad’s plates.
His copper pans.
The crooked wooden sign that used to hang over the entrance.
I touched the painted pine tree with two fingers.
“Hello, Emma.”
I turned.
Gregory Shaw stood in the doorway.
Sixty.
Silver hair.
Expensive coat.
No weapon.
No dramatic menace.
Just a tired man with the expression of someone who had been expecting judgment for a very long time.
“You destroyed my father.”
“No.”
“You buried evidence.”
“Yes.”
“You protected Marcus.”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t insult me with distinctions.”
He nodded.
“Fair.”
“Why did Marcus hire me?”
Gregory stepped inside.
“Because I told him to.”
My stomach twisted.
“Why?”
“To watch you.”
“For what?”
“The cookbook.”
My eyes widened.
He smiled without humor.
“Daniel told Nathan he had evidence. We searched the restaurant after the fire. We searched his office. His bank box. The house after foreclosure.”
“You broke into our home?”
“I paid people who did.”
I wanted to hit him.
Instead I asked, “Why did you think I had it?”
“Because your father never trusted banks with anything important.”
He gestured toward the storage boxes.
“He trusted kitchens.”
“And Marcus thought I’d lead him to it.”
“Yes.”
“So he hired me.”
“Yes.”
“Why let me work there eleven months?”
“Because you never cooked.”
That answer landed strangely.
Gregory continued.
“Marcus said you appeared broken. He thought eventually something would make you reach for your father’s things.”
“The risotto.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why he looked scared.”
“Because the moment Nathan tasted your food, he recognized Daniel.”
I frowned.
“How?”
Gregory studied me.
“You still don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Why Nathan asked who cooked it?”
“Because he liked it.”
Gregory laughed softly.
“No, Emma.”
He walked to one of the boxes and lifted a yellowed menu from Hearth & Pine.
He pointed to an item.
Wild Mushroom Risotto.
Brown Apple Butter.
I stared.
“That dish was your father’s signature.”
“I know.”
“Nathan had eaten it once.”
“The night of the photograph.”
“No.”
Gregory looked at me.
“Years earlier.”
My heart slowed.
“How many years?”
“Twenty-six.”
I looked up.
Gregory’s expression had changed.
Almost pity.
“No.”
He said nothing.
“No.”
“Ask Nathan why he invested in restaurants.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“Ask him why he knew your father before Coyle.”
I backed toward the door.
Gregory called after me.
“One more thing.”
I stopped.
“Marcus didn’t sabotage the gas valve.”
I turned.
“What?”
“He falsified reports. He threatened Daniel. He covered up the investigation.”
“Then who replaced the valve?”
Gregory looked at me.
His next words barely carried.
“Daniel did.”
Nathan was waiting outside.
Of course he was.
Two black SUVs sat beside his car.
He had tracked my phone.
I should have been furious.
Instead, I walked toward him holding the old menu.
He saw my face.
“Emma?”
“How long did you know my father?”
Nathan stopped.
I held up the menu.
“How long?”
He closed his eyes.
There it was.
Another hidden room.
Another locked door.
“Twenty-seven years.”
My breath left me.
“You said you met him four years ago.”
“I said the photograph was taken four years ago.”
“You let me believe—”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Nathan looked toward the storage building.
“Because the truth wasn’t mine to tell.”
“My father is dead.”
“I know.”
“Then whose truth is it?”
His eyes filled.
Mine did too.
And suddenly I hated the way he looked at me.
Like he had known me longer than I knew him.
“What are you not telling me?”
Nathan reached slowly into his coat.
Another photograph.
This one was much older.
Dad was maybe twenty-eight.
Standing outside a tiny diner.
Beside him was a thin teenage boy with hollow cheeks and a ridiculous haircut.
Nathan.
Seventeen.
I stared at it.
“My mother died when I was sixteen,” Nathan said. “My father had disappeared years earlier. I slept in my car for seven months.”
I looked up.
“Your biographies say you started your first company at nineteen.”
“I did.”
“They don’t mention this.”
“No.”
Nathan touched the edge of the photograph.
“I used to sit outside a diner in Asheville because they threw away bread at midnight.”
My throat tightened.
“One night Daniel found me digging through the trash.”
That sounded like Dad.
Painfully.
“He didn’t give me money,” Nathan said. “He told me to wash my hands.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
Nathan did too.
“He made me risotto. Mushrooms. Cheap stock. Apple butter.”
My chest contracted.
“He said, ‘Expensive ingredients can impress someone once—’”
“But if you want them to come back,” I whispered, “cook something that reminds them they’re human.”
Nathan looked down.
“He fed me for six months.”
Tears blurred the photograph.
“He helped me get a warehouse job. Let me sleep in the diner storeroom during winter. When I started my first courier company, he gave me eight hundred dollars.”
“Dad didn’t have eight hundred dollars.”
“He had nine hundred and twelve.”
I laughed and cried at the same time.
“That idiot.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he ever tell me?”
“He made me promise not to.”
“Why?”
“Because he said if he ever became the kind of man who needed his daughter to know every decent thing he’d done, then the decent things weren’t worth much.”
That was so exactly my father that something inside me collapsed.
Nathan continued.
“When I became successful, I tried to repay him. He refused every check. Years later, when Coyle came after him, he finally called me.”
“And you didn’t believe him.”
“No.”
The joy vanished.
Nathan’s voice cracked.
“The man who saved me called once in his entire life to ask for help.”
He swallowed.
“And I failed him.”
Neither of us spoke.
Then I remembered Gregory.
“He said Dad replaced the valve.”
Nathan frowned.
“What?”
“He said Marcus didn’t sabotage it.”
“That contradicts the work order.”
“Unless Dad ordered the contractor himself.”
Nathan looked alarmed.
“Why would he—”
My phone rang.
Detective Ruiz.
I answered.
“Emma, we found Samuel Reed’s daughter.”
I gripped Nathan’s sleeve.
“And?”
“She had her father’s original service logs.”
My heartbeat pounded in my ears.
Ruiz continued.
“The valve wasn’t defective when he installed it.”
I closed my eyes.
“Then what caused the leak?”
A pause.
“The fitting had been loosened manually after installation.”
“So Marcus—”
“No.”
“What?”
“There’s security footage from a neighboring business. The person who entered through the rear door that evening was Daniel Hayes.”
The world went still.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
“At 10:54 p.m. About forty minutes before the fire.”
Nathan stared at me.
I whispered, “Why would Dad loosen his own gas line?”
May you like
Ruiz hesitated.
Then said, “Emma, we found another recording.”
