A Name on the Payroll
Chapter 02 - A Name on the Payroll
Delphine had been raised in an apartment above a laundromat in Queens. Her mother washed good dresses by hand, saved the brown envelopes that came from the bank, and once every Christmas bought herself an expensive bar of lemon soap. Marianne Aubrey believed in careful records. She labeled medicine bottles with their expiration dates and kept rent receipts in a blue biscuit tin. When she died, Delphine found three decades of papers arranged in neat folders, and not a single letter explaining why she had begun sleeping with a chair against her bedroom door.
Elias led Delphine away from the ballroom into the library. It was quieter there. A fire had burned down to coals. Along one wall hung photographs of Ferraro men looking prosperous and unhappy, as if wealth had been a family obligation none of them particularly enjoyed.
"I used my own name," Delphine told him. "Your human-resources office hired me. Nobody checked beyond my references."
"And you came looking for something."
"Yes." She disliked how relieved she felt when he said it plainly. "Six years ago my mother told me there was a document in this house that would explain why she was being followed. She changed her mind the next day. Told me to forget she'd said it. Then she died and the papers I thought she had were missing."
"What kind of document?"
"She called it the second trust."
He reached for the telephone on his desk and stopped. "My security chief can check the carriage house."
"If your security chief is honest." She knew she had gone too far when his eyes hardened. But she had come too far to take it back. "I saw him unlock the side gate for Camille on Thursday. He wasn't surprised to see her."
Elias put the receiver down. "His name is Peter Knox. He's worked for me for eight years."
"Then maybe ask him where he was at twelve forty on Thursday."
For a few seconds they stood in silence. She had imagined the powerful man becoming angry and sending her away; she had not imagined him looking tired. At thirty-four, Elias Ferraro was younger than his father's reputation, but he seemed to carry it as an older person carried arthritis: without complaint, and at a cost.
"Bring me what you've seen," he said. "Not theories. Papers, names, dates."
"I can do that."
"And if you're lying, you'll leave tonight."
"If I'm lying, I deserve to."
He almost smiled at that, then caught himself. He walked her to the staff corridor instead of ringing for someone to escort her. As they passed the door, an elderly woman in a black velvet dress rose from a sofa near the cloakroom. Delphine knew her by sight: Ada Keene, one of the original Saint Agnes residents, invited every year to the foundation gala and seated at a table far from the donors.
"Marianne's girl," Ada said, not quite a question.
Delphine stopped. "You knew my mother?"
"I knew how she took her tea. Too strong, no milk. She always said it helped her think." Ada's hands twisted around the handle of her handbag. "I saw you talking to the young Ferraro. You shouldn't go near the carriage house alone."
"Why?" Elias asked.
Ada studied him with the bluntness available to people who have already survived the worst a family can do. "Because your father kept important things in places nobody would think to look. And your uncle never throws a thing away if it might someday buy someone's silence."
Elias's uncle, Rafael Ferraro, had been his father's business partner until a very public falling-out. In recent years Rafael handled construction companies Elias claimed to keep at arm's length. He was also the man who called Saint Agnes a sentimental drain. Delphine looked at Elias to see whether he'd protest. He did not.
Ada asked to sit down, and Elias moved a chair for her himself. There was an awkwardness to it that Delphine found unexpectedly moving. The Ferraro family had paid for Ada's place at the gala every year, yet no one had thought to make sure she could hear the speeches or reach the washroom easily. This evening the old woman had been seated behind a column. She told Elias so without embarrassment.
"Your mother used to come find us," Ada said. "Not because we were interesting guests. Because she knew being invited isn't the same as being welcomed."
Delphine watched Elias absorb the distinction. She wondered whether he would remember it after the elderly woman was gone and the servants resumed clearing glasses.
"What did my father keep there?" Elias asked.
"I don't know. I heard arguments. Your mother, Marianne, old Mr. Rourke the bookkeeper. Those people didn't have voices like yours, Mr. Ferraro. They had to whisper if they wanted to be heard at all."
Ada reached into her handbag and drew out a small piece of cardboard. It was a library checkout card, yellowed along its edges, with a penciled number in the corner. On the back was a name: JOSEPH ROURKE. "Marianne gave me this before she went into the hospital. She said that if someone came asking about the second trust, I should hand it over. Then she said she hoped nobody ever would."
"Why didn't you tell anyone?" Delphine asked.
"Who was I supposed to tell?" Ada said. Her voice had no accusation in it. That made the question worse.
Elias examined the card. "The number is a storage reference. My father used the same system for documents he didn't want our lawyers copying."
A sharp sound came from the hallway. The staff door banged against the wall. Camille appeared in the opening, breathless now, the carefully arranged strands of her hair loosened around her face. She glanced first at Ada, then at the cardboard in Elias's hand.
"Elias, please," she said. "Don't do this in front of strangers."
"What have you been doing in the carriage house?"
"Trying to protect you."
"By forging a dead woman's signature?"
Camille's gaze flickered toward Delphine. "Is that what she told you?" Her voice softened. "You should ask your uncle what happened to the original pages. He was there when your mother wrote the rules. I wasn't."
She walked away before he could answer. Neither Elias nor Delphine followed. The last guests were departing the ballroom; their laughter drifted through the hall in small, careless bursts. Ada put her coat over her shoulders.
May you like
"There are two people in this house who know why Marianne died frightened," she said. "One of them has just walked away from us. The other is the man who pays your wages."
At midnight, Elias went to his father's old filing cabinet and found the storage index. Reference 47B was marked with a single word in the margin: DESTROYED. Under it, in his mother's small clear handwriting, someone had written: NOT BY ME.
