Elliot had signed as a maintenance supervisor and former cooperative member.
“Dad was an owner?”
“A very small one,” Denise said.
“Most of the shares were worth less than a used car back then.”
“Now the neighborhood is worth millions.”
“That’s why the papers mattered.”
The cooperative had owned two neighboring parcels, including the building that had become The Mariner.
When Bell Industrial Partners acquired the property, it promised to retain a community workshop, provide affordable leases to existing businesses, and pay a percentage of later sales to the original members.
Few of those promises appeared in the public deed.
The documents cited a private schedule of beneficiaries, and that schedule went missing before the second sale.
“Why would Warren take all that trouble?” Mason asked.
“Because the promises weren’t a handshake anymore,” Denise replied.
“They were an obligation.”
She admitted that Elliot had suspected a second set of signatures was forged.
He had confronted Warren at a warehouse office during a December snowstorm and returned home with a split lip.
Mason had been too young to remember the fight, but he remembered the silence afterward.
Denise pointed to the green-tagged key.
“Your father believed the original records were stored in a locker he could still open.”
“Where was the locker?”
“He never told me.”
“He said knowing could put us in the same position he was in.”
Mason looked at the key and wondered whether his father had protected them or merely left another impossible burden behind.
Denise touched his hand.
“If you speak to that man tomorrow, don’t let him turn your father’s pain into a pretty story about a generous old businessman.”
Mason promised he would not.
The promise frightened him more than the prospect of being unemployed.
Chapter 6: Breakfast Without Witnesses
They met at a public library near the river instead of at a restaurant.
Arthur Bell arrived wearing a clean coat and carrying a paper cup of coffee he had bought himself.
Without the torn coat he looked less mysterious and more exhausted.
He had a white scar beside his left ear and walked with a slight limp.
Miriam brought a portable document scanner and a notebook full of page numbers.
Denise insisted on attending.
Arthur stood when he saw her.
“Denise,” he said.
“You knew where we lived,” she replied.
“You could have come before Elliot died.”
Arthur accepted the words without protest.
“I could have,” he said.
“I kept believing I needed proof before I came.”
