Chapter 4 - A Name Sewn Into the Hem
My sister Lily called from Newark while I was examining the old laundry ledger. She had received her asthma prescription. I felt a flash of relief so fierce it made my eyes sting, followed by the old guilt of knowing I had been too busy with danger to ask about her day.
I told her I might be leaving the estate. She didn't ask whether I could afford it. “I can work weekends,” she said. “You kept me alive. Let me help you live.”
In the sewing room I found a scrap of charcoal lining caught beneath the industrial machine. Someone had stitched a name inside the hem: E. SALAZAR. A former driver, according to the staff roster. He had resigned after Marco's death. His forwarding address led to a small repair shop in Queens.
Dante wanted to send six armed men. I said six armed men would frighten an innocent witness and warn a guilty one. We went with a lawyer and one plainclothes driver instead.
Salazar was repairing a bicycle when we arrived. He recognized Dante, dropped his wrench, and asked us to leave. Only when I showed him the scrap did he stop shaking.
“I sewed that into my jacket,” he said. “So someone would know it was mine if I disappeared.”
He had driven a backup car on the night Marco died. The official dispatch order had changed fifteen minutes before the ambush. Salazar kept a copy of the revised route, but not the original. He had given the original to a woman from the laundry service because no one searched her bags.
“Who?” I asked.
He looked at me with an expression I would remember for years. “Your predecessor. Teresa Vale. She disappeared two days later.”
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On the way home, Dante admitted he had accepted the official report without speaking to the staff who were present. “I thought I was protecting everyone,” he said.
“You were protecting the story you were told,” I replied. “Those aren't always the same thing.”
