🥀 THE WOMAN THEY SENT TO THE WRONG TABLE 2

Chapter 02 - The Last Number

The name was Arthur Bell. Rose had watched it flash on Ben's phone the night before he died. Ben had turned the screen facedown on their kitchen table and said, with unusual firmness, "Not tonight."

He had died in their hallway the next afternoon, carrying a bag of oranges. She still remembered the sound of the fruit rolling across the tile. The doctors had called it a sudden cardiac event. There had been no mystery in the medical report, and Rose had never believed otherwise. The mystery was what Ben had been trying to tell her before the ambulance came.

"Arthur Bell is your friend?" she asked.

Lucian nodded. "We grew up three blocks apart. He became an engineer. I went into restaurants and property. We've done business together. He signed the safety assessment that paved the way for East Harbor's sale."

"And you didn't know until now?"

"I knew he consulted for the foundation. I didn't know your name had been used."

Rose searched his face for the practiced evasion she had come to expect from people with money. He had no reason to be frightened of her, which was not the same thing as having no reason to lie. She put the papers back in order.

"My husband died of a heart attack," she said. "I don't want you to turn that into a murder story because it would make somebody's real estate deal more interesting."

"Neither do I."

His plain answer unsettled her more than sympathy would have.

Across the room, Vivian walked toward them, with Celeste half a step behind. Margo remained by the orchids, fingering the stem of her empty glass. Vivian's smile had returned, though it no longer fit quite right.

"Lucian, what a lovely surprise. Rose, darling, there you are. We wondered where you'd disappeared to."

Rose almost admired the nerve of it. "You told me he was expecting a proposal."

"A little encouragement. You can be so difficult to get out of your shell."

"You wrote a note about what I had left to lose."

Vivian looked at Lucian. "It's a private joke. Rose is terribly sensitive about the unfortunate incident at the foundation."

"The missing grant money?" he asked.

"I wouldn't use that language here."

"That's precisely the language the foundation used when it sent a letter to every preservation firm in New York."

Vivian's hand tightened around her clutch. For one second, Rose saw a tired, frightened woman beneath the immaculate makeup. Then the mask settled again.

"I hope you're not considering business with her," Vivian said.

Lucian stood. "I'm considering dinner. You're interrupting it."

The dismissal was not dramatic, but it was complete. Celeste moved first; Vivian followed as though she had decided to leave of her own accord. Rose watched them cross the restaurant, watched the other guests look away. She had wanted someone to speak to those women that way for a very long time. Now that someone had, the pleasure lasted only a few seconds. The documents still lay between her and a stranger.

"You can have them," Lucian said, reading her gaze. "Copies. Keep them. Have your own lawyer look."

"I don't have a lawyer."

"I can recommend three. You choose one, or none."

She surprised herself by smiling. "You're careful about giving orders."

"I've had enough people mistake money for permission."

He paid for her meal despite her attempt to cover it, and he did not offer to drive her home. Instead he wrote a number on the back of his card, the private office of a legal aid attorney who had defended a local housing cooperative. Rose tucked it into the folder. When she stepped onto the sidewalk, the city smelled of wet stone and pretzels. She took the subway home because she wanted something familiar under her feet.

Her daughter, Ella, was waiting on the kitchen counter in sweatpants, eating leftover noodles. At twenty-six, Ella had Ben's narrow face and Rose's habit of going silent when angry. She worked as a social worker for a neighborhood clinic and considered exhaustion a temporary inconvenience.

"You look like a disco ball that got into a fight," Ella said.

"That bad?"

"The dress is gorgeous. Your face is not reassuring."

Rose told her everything except the worst part first. The trap. The man at the table. The old story of his mother and Mrs. Bellamy. Ella stopped eating when Rose opened the folder.

"Dad's name?" she said.

"Yes."

Ella read the pages twice. "Mom, remember his blue notebook? The one with the house measurements?"

"He kept six notebooks."

"Not like that. The one he told me I could use for my college apartment. I found it in the linen closet last month."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I thought it was a notebook."

They went to the hall cupboard. The box of Ben's possessions sat behind a stack of winter blankets. Eight years of grief had not made it easier to lift. Inside were a broken watch, a photograph of Ella on a bicycle, two receipts for paint, and three spiral notebooks. None was blue.

Ella frowned. "It was here. I put it right on top."

Rose looked at the cupboard door. Its catch had been loose for months. On the shelf below, the linen had been refolded with its seams facing out. She folded towels with the seams in. Ben had once laughed that she could detect a visitor by the position of a washcloth.

"Was somebody here while I was out?" she asked.

"The superintendent brought a plumber in yesterday. He said there was a leak in the line behind your wall."

There had been no leak. Rose had washed dishes that morning.

Ella reached for her phone. "I'm calling the building manager."

"No." Rose heard the sharpness in her own voice. "First, take a picture of everything. Then we'll call."

They photographed the shelf, the catch, the box, the papers. It was an absurdly inadequate defense against whoever had entered their apartment. Yet it gave them something to do besides stand in the small kitchen and imagine a man searching among the things Ben had touched.

At midnight, while Ella slept on the couch, Rose spread Ben's old phone bills across the table. She had kept them in a folder for tax records. Arthur Bell's number appeared three times in the week before the funeral. Then there was one outgoing call on the following Thursday, four days after Ben had died.

The call lasted six minutes and eleven seconds.

Rose stared until the numbers blurred. Ben's phone had been in her purse that Thursday. She had not made a call. She had hardly spoken to anyone.