Chapter 4 - The Blue Dinosaur
The ride to Queens took twenty-seven minutes. I counted every one.
Anthony sat beside me in the armored car while Daniel called the police, my neighbor, and every guard assigned to the building.
I refused to let myself cry. Noah needed a mother who could think.
Mrs. Alvarez met us outside. Her face was gray.
“I only went downstairs for a minute,” she said. “Someone pulled the fire alarm. When I came back, the door was open.”
On Noah's bed lay the blue dinosaur.
Its missing plastic eye faced the ceiling.
Beside it was a note.
BRING THE KEY. COME ALONE.
I hadn't told Anthony about the key my mother had mailed me three days before her death. He saw my expression and understood.
“Claire,” he said quietly, “what key?”
I opened the wooden jewelry box in my dresser. Beneath a false bottom lay a small silver key with the number 317 etched into its stem.
I gave him the truth, not the key.
“Mom told me to hide it if anything happened to her.”
Daniel photographed the note. Anthony ordered his people to check the building cameras, but I demanded that police remain in charge of the search.
At midnight a video arrived on my phone.
Noah sat on a narrow bed, frightened but unharmed. Someone had placed a glass of water beside him.
“Mom,” he said, trying not to cry, “I did what you taught me. I remembered the blue door.”
Then the screen went black.
The blue door.
When Noah was five, we had made up a game: if he was lost, he would describe one unusual thing he saw, even if someone told him not to.
Daniel froze the last frame. Behind Noah was a reflection of a blue industrial door in a metal cabinet.
Anthony recognized the faded emblem painted on it.
“Bellini Cold Storage,” he said.
I stared at him.
“Your company?”
“My father's old company. It closed before Sofia was born.”
Daniel was already tracing the address.
I picked up the dinosaur and squeezed it against my chest.
Something crackled inside.
A seam had been stitched shut by hand. I found scissors, cut it open, and pulled out a folded square of oilcloth.
Inside was a photograph of Margaret standing beside Eleanor Bellini and a baby.
On the back, in my mother's handwriting, were six words:
IF THEY TAKE ROSE, FIND CLAIRE.
May you like
And beneath those words was a date.
The day before my mother supposedly died.
