CHAPTER TWO — THE LEATHER CASE

Three black sedans pulled against the curb, followed by a silver Bentley that looked impossibly polished beneath the falling snow.
Curtis hurried toward the door before anyone knocked.
A woman in a navy coat entered with two security officers who kept their hands visible and their expressions unreadable.
She surveyed the counter and the empty soup bowl.
“Which one of you is Nora Bennett?” she asked.
Nora raised her hand.
The woman crossed the room without looking at Curtis.
“My name is Claire Whitmore, and I am executive director of Whitmore Industries.”
Curtis stopped smiling.
“Is there a problem with our restaurant?”
“I’m speaking to Ms. Bennett.”
Claire looked at Nora’s apron and tired eyes.
“The man you helped is Henry Whitmore, my father.”
Nora glanced toward the street.


She recognized the name from buildings, billboards, and the business section of newspapers she read on the bus.
Henry Whitmore had funded hospitals and concert halls across the city.
His family also owned enough property that people joked he could cross Chicago without leaving his own buildings.
“Is he all right?” Nora asked.
“He’s receiving medical attention, and he insisted I come here.”
Claire set a small locked leather case on the counter.
The brass corners had scratches that made it look older than its expensive stitching.
“My father asked me to give this only to you.”
Curtis moved closer.
“If this concerns something that happened in my establishment, I should probably be present.”
Claire answered without turning.
“It concerns her choice, not your establishment.”
She placed a tiny key beside the case.


Nora made no move to touch it.
“Why would your father have something for me?”
“Because he heard you say that twelve dollars mattered to you.”
“That doesn’t explain a locked box.”
Claire’s expression changed almost imperceptibly.
“No, it doesn’t.”
She hesitated before adding that her father had insisted on bringing an object from a building that would close at sunrise.
Nora inserted the key and lifted the lid.
Inside lay a pair of white cotton gloves, a small brass winding handle, and a wooden music box with one corner chipped away.
There was also a stiff card bearing a photograph of a woman standing beneath theater lights.
The woman was laughing, her head tipped slightly back, with a microphone in her hand.
Across the bottom someone had written in ink, MARION WHITMORE, LAST REHEARSAL.
Nora looked from the photograph to Claire.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I when he asked for it,” Claire replied.
Nora turned the music box carefully.
The winding hole was empty, and its lid had been repaired with mismatched screws.
A paper label on the underside read WREN THEATER, PROPERTIES, 1998.
Claire watched Nora’s hands.
“Do you know the Wren Theater?”
Nora nodded.
Her mother had cleaned costumes there before Nora was born.
When Nora was twelve, the theater held free afternoon performances for neighborhood children.
Her mother had taken her to hear a singer whose name Nora could no longer remember.
“It’s closing?” she asked.
“At sunrise, the company begins dismantling the old stage.”
“Why?”
Claire’s jaw tightened.
“Because a board committee approved a replacement production.”
The answer sounded rehearsed.
Nora looked again at the photograph.
“What happened to Marion Whitmore?”
“She was my mother.”
Curtis made a sympathetic noise, but Claire ignored him.
“She died sixteen years ago.”
Nora closed the lid of the case gently.
“I’m sorry.”
“My father asked me to take you to the Wren tonight.”
“Why would I go?”
Claire held her gaze.
“Because tomorrow night, the theater is scheduled to present my mother’s voice to an audience of two thousand people.”
Nora frowned.
“Didn’t you say she died?”
“Yes.”
Claire looked at the music box as if it might answer for her.
“The voice they’ve prepared isn’t hers.”