“So?”
“So I checked.”
Katherine took the bag.
The brass key was old.
Small.
No marking except three hand-stamped numbers.
She looked up.
“That mean anything?”
“No.”
James nodded toward the Ferrari.
“There's more.”
He opened the passenger door.
Inside, the leather smelled exactly the way Katherine remembered from childhood.
James pointed beneath the dashboard.
“Somebody had this panel off recently.”
“How recently?”
“Hard to say.”
“But not decades.”
“No.”
“Could Marlow have done it?”
“Maybe.”
He handed her a photograph.
Fresh tool marks near the panel fastener.
Katherine looked toward him.
“Why hide a key in a car?”
“You tell me.”
She thought.
Three eighteen.
March eighteenth?
Room 318?
Account?
Her father liked numbers.
He remembered birthdays but pretended not to.
He memorized license plates.
His office safe code had once been her mother's birthday reversed.
Katherine whispered:
“318.”
Then stopped.
James noticed.
“What?”
“My father's first factory.”
“What about it?”
“318 Mercer Street.”
James nodded.
“Where?”
“Atlanta.”
“Still there?”
Katherine shook her head.
“Sold twenty years ago.”
“What's there now?”
She searched.
A commercial storage facility occupied the address.
Katherine looked at James.
“No.”
He smiled slightly.
“Worth checking.”
They drove separately.
Katherine insisted.
James accused her of not trusting his truck.
She said his truck had moss.
He said that was environmentally conscious.
At 318 Mercer Street, they found a converted brick warehouse.
Most of the building had become climate-controlled storage.
The manager examined the key.
“Old box key.”
“Here?”
“Maybe.”
He checked records.
Robert Vaughn had rented a small private archival locker there twelve years earlier.
Katherine stared.
“Is it active?”
The manager looked at his computer.
“Paid through next March.”
“Who pays?”
“Automatic account.”
“Can I access it?”
“You'll need estate documentation.”
Katherine almost pulled out her phone and called three lawyers.
James stopped her with a look.
“Do it correctly.”
She hated him for being right.
Two hours later, after corporate counsel sent estate verification, the manager escorted them into the basement.
Locker 318.
Of course.
Katherine put the brass key into the old secondary lock.
It turned.
Inside were six banker boxes.
One leather briefcase.
A framed photograph.
No treasure.
No cash.
No dramatic stack of secrets.
Katherine picked up the photograph.
Her parents.
Young.
Robert in jeans.
Loretta—no, wrong story. Katherine's mother was Evelyn Vaughn, died when Katherine was nineteen—standing beside the red Ferrari.
Katherine's throat tightened.
Her mother had one hand on the roof.
Her father was laughing.
James looked away to give her privacy.
She appreciated that.
Katherine set the photograph down.
Opened the leather briefcase.
Inside were handwritten notebooks.