Chapter 2 - The Woman Who No Longer Existed
Nell's first instinct was to run.
Not metaphorically.
Actually run.
Her eyes went from Benny to Carmine, then to the open office door as if calculating whether she could reach the front entrance before either man stopped her.
Carmine noticed.
“I'm not keeping you here.”
“That isn't what I'm afraid of.”
“Then tell me what is.”
Nell gave a small, bitter laugh.
“You think because you found a newspaper clipping, you understand what happened?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She stepped backward.
“Then leave it alone.”
Benny looked at Carmine.
Carmine remained still.
“Eighty thousand dollars isn't a clerical mistake, Nell.”
“You don't know what it was for.”
“Neither do you.”
“I know what happens when people ask questions.”
Her voice had changed.
The quiet housekeeper was disappearing.
Something older had surfaced beneath her restraint.
Not weakness.
Experience.
Carmine gestured toward a chair.
“Sit down.”
“No.”
It was the second time she'd refused him in twenty-four hours.
Benny almost smiled.
Carmine didn't.
Instead, he asked, “Where is your father?”
Nell's expression hardened.
“That isn't your business.”
“He survived the fire.”
“Technically.”
The word landed heavily.
Nell looked down at the photograph.
“My father spent nine weeks in the hospital. Smoke inhalation caused brain damage. Some days he's completely clear. Other days he forgets what year it is. Sometimes he wakes up convinced the bakery is still open.”
Her voice thinned.
“He asks me whether I remembered to start the dough.”
Carmine said nothing.
“He lost his business,” Nell continued. “His home. His health. His reputation. The insurance company said negligence. People who had known us for years stopped returning calls because they thought we were going to ask for money.”
“And you changed your name.”
“My mother's maiden name was Brisco.”
“Why?”
Nell looked toward Benny.
Then Carmine.
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Because after the fire, someone started following me.”
Benny's posture changed.
“Describe them.”
“I never saw a face clearly. Sometimes a dark sedan. Sometimes a man across the street from the rehabilitation center. Once I came home and my apartment door was open.”
“Anything stolen?”
“No.”
“That can be worse,” Benny said.
Nell looked at him.
“I know.”
Carmine's jaw tightened.
“What happened next?”
“I moved. Changed jobs. Changed my name. Stopped baking.”
“Why stop baking?”
Nell looked at the photograph again.
“Because people remembered Eleanor Fontaine when they tasted her food.”
The answer explained more than Carmine expected.
The pie hadn't merely been dessert.
It had been a fingerprint.
Chef Reynolds cutting his hand had created a small household emergency. Odette needed someone capable of finishing dessert.
Nell had stepped into the kitchen.
For one evening, instinct had defeated caution.
And Carmine had recognized that she was too skilled to be what her personnel file claimed.
“Does Odette know?” he asked.
Nell's eyes shifted.
“Know what?”
“Who you are.”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Carmine remembered Odette's trembling hands.
He filed that away.
“Where is your father now?”
Nell hesitated.
“A private assisted-living facility outside the city.”
“Under Brisco?”
“Yes.”
“Has anyone contacted him?”
“Not that I know of.”
Benny spoke carefully.
“If somebody paid the investigator, and somebody followed you afterward, your father may be the only surviving witness to whatever happened.”
Nell's face drained again.
Carmine stood.
“Benny.”
“Already thinking it.”
“No.”
Nell stepped between them.
“You stay away from him.”
Carmine stopped.
“I can have someone check the facility without approaching him.”
“No.”
“Nell—”
“You don't understand him. Strangers upset him. Questions upset him. If you walk in there with security people and start talking about the fire, he'll spend three days believing he's trapped inside it again.”
Carmine held her gaze.
“All right.”
The quick agreement surprised her.
“I'll do nothing without telling you first.”
“You expect me to trust that?”
“No.”
That answer silenced her.
Carmine continued.
“But I expect you to judge what I do next.”
For several seconds, neither moved.
Finally Nell picked up the newspaper photograph.
Her thumb passed over her father's smiling face.
“That was taken three weeks before the fire.”
Carmine waited.
“My mother died when I was sixteen. Dad almost closed the bakery afterward. He couldn't walk into the kitchen without seeing her. I was the one who convinced him to stay.”
Her mouth trembled.
“For years I wondered if that was the worst thing I'd ever done.”
“You didn't start the fire.”
“You don't know that.”
“You said it wasn't an accident.”
“I didn't chain the door. But the oven—”
She stopped.
Carmine heard the unfinished sentence.
“What about the oven?”
Nell's eyes closed.
“I was the last baker to use it that night.”
Benny leaned forward.
“What time?”
“A little after ten.”
“And when you left?”
“I shut it down.”
“You're certain?”
Nell looked offended.
“I checked it twice.”
“Who remained inside?”
“My father. He was doing inventory in the office.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
“What time did the fire start?”
“About one fifteen.”
Benny frowned.
“Three hours later.”
“Yes.”
“And the official report says the oven was left running.”
“Yes.”
“Could someone restart it?”
“Of course.”
“Who had access?”
Nell hesitated.
“Employees. My father. Me.”
“Keys?”
“Several people had them.”
“Names?”
“I don't remember everyone who still had a key by then.”
Carmine caught the wording.
“By then?”
Nell's face changed.
“What was happening to the bakery before the fire?”
She stared at him.
Then sat down at last.
“We'd been receiving offers.”
“What kind?”
“To sell.”
“From whom?”
“A development company.”
Benny took out his phone.
“Name?”
Nell pressed her fingers against her temples.
“Bayou Meridian Development.”
Carmine and Benny exchanged a look.
Nell noticed.
“What?”
Benny searched quickly.
His expression became serious.
“Company dissolved two years ago.”
“So?”
“Registered address was a law office.”
Carmine asked, “Owners?”
“Layered LLCs.”
Nell looked between them.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Carmine said, “somebody didn't want their name attached to it.”
The office became quiet.
Nell stared at the old photograph.
“The offers started six months before the fire. Dad refused every one.”
“Why?”
“He loved that building.”
“Was it valuable?”
“It was an old bakery on Magazine Street.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
Nell thought.
“There was talk about redevelopment. Hotels. Luxury retail. Dad said he'd rather die behind his counter than sell to people who'd turn the neighborhood into something nobody living there could afford.”
Benny stopped typing.
“That's a memorable sentence.”
“He said it often.”
“Did anyone threaten him?”
“No.”
Then Nell's expression changed.
“Wait.”
Carmine leaned forward.
“What?”
“A man came in two weeks before the fire.”
“What man?”
“I don't know his name. Expensive suit. Maybe forty-five. He asked for Dad.”
“What did they discuss?”
“I couldn't hear everything.”
“But?”
“He told Dad the offer wouldn't stay generous forever.”
Carmine's eyes sharpened.
“What did your father say?”
Nell almost smiled.
“He told him to buy a muffin and get out.”
Benny exhaled through his nose.
“I like your father.”
For the first time since entering the office, Nell nearly laughed.
Then Benny's phone vibrated.
He looked down.
The trace of humor vanished.
“What?” Carmine asked.
“I searched the investigator's wife.”
“And?”
“She still lives in Louisiana.”
“Can you contact her?”
“I already did.”
Nell stared at him.
“When?”
“While you were talking.”
“What did she say?”
Benny looked at Carmine.
“She wouldn't discuss the fire.”
“That doesn't mean anything.”
“No.”
Benny turned the screen around.
“But this might.”
A message had arrived.
One sentence.
STOP ASKING ABOUT FONTAINE IF YOU WANT TO STAY ALIVE.
Nell stood so quickly the chair struck the rug behind her.
“I told you.”
Carmine read the message twice.
“You told me someone wanted this forgotten.”
“No. I told you to leave it alone.”
She grabbed the photograph.
“I quit.”
Carmine looked up.
“What?”
“My job. Effective now.”
“You think leaving protects you?”
“It protected me for three years.”
“Until you made the pie.”
Her eyes flashed.
“That was my mistake.”
“No.”
Carmine's voice remained quiet.
“The mistake belongs to whoever believed frightening you was the same thing as proving you guilty.”
Nell stared at him.
He continued.
“If you walk out alone now, somebody who has already noticed these questions may notice you too.”
“I survived without you before.”
“I know.”
Something about the way he said it stopped her.
Not pity.
Respect.
Carmine took a blank piece of paper and wrote an address.
He slid it toward her.
“What is this?”
“One of my properties. Nobody outside my immediate staff knows I use it.”
“I don't want your protection.”
“Then don't call it protection. Call it somewhere to sleep until we know whether that message was meant for Benny or for you.”
Nell didn't touch the paper.
Carmine looked at the photograph still clenched in her hand.
“Someone stole three years from you, Eleanor.”
She flinched at the name.
“Don't call me that.”
“Why?”
“Because she failed.”
Carmine's expression softened.
“No. She survived.”
Nell stared at him for a long moment.
Then she took the address.
That evening, Benny drove her to the small private residence Carmine had offered.
Before she left, Palmira found Carmine alone in the dining room.
The remaining pecan pie sat untouched beneath a glass cover.
“You frightened her,” Palmira said.
“I think someone else did that years before me.”
Palmira looked toward the dessert.
“Then be careful.”
“Of what?”
“Of deciding that because you can uncover the truth, you automatically know what to do with it.”
Carmine studied his grandmother.
“You know something.”
Palmira didn't answer.
“Grandmother.”
She looked toward the service doorway.
“Ask Odette why she hired Nell.”
Carmine became very still.
Palmira walked away.
Twenty minutes later, Carmine found Odette in the pantry.
She was labeling linen inventory as though nothing had happened.
“Why did you hire Nell Brisco?”
Odette's hand stopped.
“She needed work.”
“That wasn't my question.”
Odette slowly turned.
For twenty-two years she had served the Orsini household.
Carmine had never seen fear in her eyes.
He saw it now.
“Why did you hire her?”
Odette lowered the label maker.
“Because,” she said quietly, “Nell Brisco never applied for this job.”
May you like
And suddenly Carmine understood that the secret inside his house had begun long before the pecan pie.
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