The Seventeenth Room
Chapter 05 - The Seventeenth Room
The Bellwether had once been a respectable hotel for traveling salesmen. By the time Lily reached it, the lobby smelled of burnt coffee and the front desk had a bell with a dent in its silver dome.
Room 17 was on the first floor. Anne insisted on coming with her. Ruth came as well, carrying a canvas bag of sandwiches and the stubborn expression she wore whenever Lily suggested she should rest.
An older woman opened the door after Anne gave her name. She was small and angular, with a silk scarf tied around close-cropped white hair. There were two suitcases on the bed and a cardboard box beneath the window.
"Alma Navarro," she said. "I was told you'd come eventually. I just didn't expect the entire neighborhood."
Alma was seventy-six. She had owned a two-bedroom apartment above a bakery on the waterfront for thirty-four years. Her husband had repaired clocks; after he died, she kept his tools in a drawer and learned to change the batteries herself.
"They told us the building needed work," she said. "Six weeks in a hotel, maybe eight. They gave us checks for expenses. Then they said we'd signed sales agreements. Our homes were already being demolished."
"Who told you?" Lily asked.
"A young attorney named Raymond Voss. He wore good shoes. Said we ought to feel grateful somebody was taking care of us."
Solen's father.
Alma took an old envelope from a drawer. Inside were several letters in June's handwriting, a faded photograph of twelve women beneath a church awning, and a photocopy of a bank statement bearing the Moretti Holdings logo.
"Your aunt found out the compensation checks were sent to an account with a similar name to our tenants' association," Alma said. "Someone made it look as though we'd been paid. She was trying to follow the money when she got sick."
"Why did they move you yesterday?" Anne asked.
Alma smiled without amusement. "A man said the hotel was renovating. But my room was the only one he needed vacated. He wasn't interested in my furniture. He wanted the metal cashbox I keep under the bed."
Ruth set down her sandwiches. "Did he get it?"
"He got an empty box. I've lived long enough to know when a man is counting on me being foolish."
Alma opened a seam in the lining of her suitcase and drew out a folded cloth packet. It held thirty-seven old receipts, each with a different woman's name and a payment amount. The receipts were stamped *disbursed*, yet Alma recognized addresses for people who had never received a cent.
Lily read them carefully. Behind each number stood a person. A kitchen repainted, a grandson's college fund, a house full of holiday ornaments packed in cardboard and never unpacked again.
"Can this help?" she asked Anne.
"It could, if we locate the underlying bank records and establish where the money went. Alma's testimony matters too."
"The man who moved me said none of us would remember correctly," Alma said. "He said old people exaggerate. Well. Here are thirty-seven things I remembered to keep."
For the first time that day Lily laughed. It felt good, although she was still afraid.
They were eating sandwiches when Alma asked quietly, "Does Cole know what his father did?"
"He knows something," Lily said. "I don't know how much."
"June liked your husband once. He came with her to a meeting. Not long after they married, I think. He heard us tell our stories. He held the door open for my sister when her knee was bad. I remember because he said he was sorry and June told him apologies didn't restore property."
Lily remembered that evening. Cole had come home angry, not at June but at his father's memory. He had said he wanted to find a way to make things right. The conversation had been interrupted by a call from Samuel Crane. They never returned to it.
"I thought he'd help," Alma said. "Perhaps he did. Perhaps not."
On the way out, the hotel clerk gave Lily a sealed message that had been left for her with a photograph of her face. Anne opened it in the car. The note contained one sentence: *Keep away from Alma unless you want the hospital bill paid in advance.*
Lily's first instinct was to hide the words. Then she pictured Alma watching people clean out a room she had paid to occupy.
"We report it," Lily said.
Anne nodded, already taking photographs of the envelope.
Back in Queens, Ruth's kitchen filled with the voices of women who had spent too long being politely disregarded. Nora Pike arrived with a notebook and no photographer. Teresa called twice and came on the third invitation. She brought homemade bread and kept her gaze on the floor until Alma greeted her.
"You remember me," Teresa said.
"I remember you sat at the back of the hearing and left before the women spoke," Alma replied. "Sit down this time."
The room grew quiet. Teresa took a chair.
Nora explained that her editor would publish only what she could verify. Anne wanted statements preserved first, then subpoenas. No one promised instant justice. They agreed to the slow work of collecting records, one person at a time.
Another woman arrived late, carrying a thermos and a packet of photographs tied with ribbon. She was Mrs. Bellamy's niece, now sixty-three, and she had brought a letter her aunt wrote after the relocation. The woman had described sleeping on a niece's couch, keeping her teaspoons in a biscuit tin because she couldn't bear to put them in somebody else's drawers.
Lily read one line aloud: "I am not difficult because I remember where I lived."
No one spoke for a moment. Nora took a photograph of the letter, with the niece's permission, and asked how her aunt liked her tea. Lily saw how much that ordinary question meant.
As they were leaving, Alma caught Lily's sleeve. "Your aunt took a copy of the bank file. She didn't trust paper after somebody broke into her office. She put it on a little device. You know, one of those things you plug into a computer."
"A flash drive?"
"Blue. With a yellow string. She said if she lost the original, we'd still have the truth."
The blue cabinet. The yellow string. Lily thought of June's lemon tin and the small brass keys that had once been kept inside.
"Where did she hide it?" Lily asked.
Alma's hand tightened around hers. "She said she hid it somewhere a man like Samuel Crane would never think to search."
May you like
That night, on the way to the car, Lily finally understood why Solen had ordered the nursery cleared first.
June had helped Lily furnish that room, and the old walnut rocking chair had a hollow space beneath its seat.
