Chapter 5 - The Building with the Wrong Number
Elena called Mrs. Patterson before the hospital elevator reached the ground floor. Her neighbor answered on the second ring, whispering as if the stranger might still be listening outside her door.
"Noah's here. He's fine," she said first. "He thinks you're working late. I told him we're making grilled cheese and watching the old detective show."
"Did the man tell you his name?"
"No. He wore a navy maintenance jacket. Said he needed to know which apartments had children so he could schedule a fire alarm inspection." Mrs. Patterson paused. "Elena, the building hasn't inspected our alarms in two years. I said as much, and he left."
Elena leaned against the elevator wall, the phone cold against her ear. "Lock your door. I'm coming with an officer. Don't open it for anybody I haven't called you about."
"I wasn't born yesterday, sweetheart. You get here safely."
An hour later, Elena stepped into her building's lobby with Detective Alvarez beside her. The elevator had been broken since February, so they climbed three flights. On the second-floor landing, someone had stuck a notice to the wall: FIRE SAFETY UPGRADES. OCCUPANTS MAY BE REQUIRED TO RELOCATE. No agency insignia appeared beneath the capital letters. The notice said residents could call an unfamiliar number for assistance.
Alvarez photographed it. "Do not call that number yet. I want to know who's receiving those calls."
"It wasn't there yesterday," Elena said. "The stairwell light's been out for months. Suddenly they're worried about safety?"
On the third floor, Noah launched himself into her arms so fiercely her bruised throat hurt. She held him anyway. His hair smelled like shampoo and toast. The relief in Mrs. Patterson's face almost made Elena cry again.
"Did something happen at work?" Noah asked.
"Something scary," she told him, crouching to meet his eyes. "I got help, and I'm home. You don't have to fix any of it."
"Are we moving?" He glanced toward the notice downstairs. "Mr. Avila said they might close the building."
Elena looked at Mrs. Patterson, who pressed her lips together. Mr. Avila lived on the first floor and repaired appliances. He had been the unofficial handyman since the superintendent disappeared last winter. Elena found him in his doorway holding a flashlight with a dead battery.
"Maintenance came by?" she asked.
"Man wearing a jacket, yes. But he didn't check a single alarm. He asked which tenants were behind on rent. Didn't like it when I asked for identification." Mr. Avila reached into his shirt pocket. "I kept the work order he dropped. Thought somebody ought to."
The paper was a carbon copy, damp at one edge. Harbor House Asset Operations. Temporary Safety Assessment. Its address was not Elena's building. It belonged to a vacant commercial warehouse several blocks away. Someone had altered the printed street number with a thick black pen.
"Why would they do that?" Elena asked.
"Same reason a thief puts a new label on an old bottle," Mr. Avila said. "To make you pay for the wrong thing."
Alvarez took the work order as evidence, noting where he had found it. She asked Mr. Avila whether he would give a recorded statement. He said yes, but his wife was frightened. Their rent was stabilized, their retirement small, and they had nowhere else to go. Alvarez explained what she could about reporting threats; she did not demand that he become a hero overnight.
Later, after Noah was asleep, Elena spread the photographs of Celia's portfolio schedule on the kitchen table. Six residential buildings. The address of her own home. A vacant warehouse copied into a maintenance order. She had spent two days thinking Marcus was trying to silence her for seeing his brother. But he was also trying to make a collection of occupied homes appear empty, damaged, and ready for sale.
Her phone rang. The caller identified himself as Dominic. He sounded exhausted but clearer, the steady beep of hospital equipment audible behind his voice.
"Dr. Ortiz said I could speak briefly," he said. "Elena, Alvarez told me about the visitor at your building. I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what? Your brother's actions?"
A long pause. "For putting him in charge of those properties. I signed the original redevelopment proposal. I believed the money would renovate the buildings and pay tenants who wanted to relocate. I didn't examine the work orders after the first quarter. Marcus did."
"People live here," she said. "Did you know that? Real people. There's a child who practices the trumpet every afternoon. Mrs. Patterson grows basil in coffee tins. Our downstairs neighbor leaves shoes outside the door because her apartment floods."
"I knew there were tenants. I didn't know the work was being falsified."
"That's the part you were paid to know."
He did not defend himself. For once, Elena found that harder to dislike than an excuse. "You're right."
She studied the altered address. "Could the warehouse be where the real maintenance money went?"
"Possibly. My father used it as a storage facility. We sold it years ago—or I thought we did." Dominic exhaled sharply. "There's an account number on the bottom of the work order. Read it to me."
Elena did, but before he answered, she heard a second voice in his hospital room. A woman's, brisk and alarmed. Dr. Ortiz.
"Dominic, who authorized your discharge?" she asked. "Someone just sent an order under my name. Again."
May you like
The call went dead.
Elena stared at the silent screen. She was beginning to recognize a pattern: every time she asked one person for a plain answer, another person tried to make the question disappear. Noah turned in his sleep and murmured about a spaceship. She tucked the blanket around him and took a fresh photograph of the suspicious work order, making sure its altered address was legible. She sent the photograph to Alvarez with the subject line: MY BUILDING IS ON THEIR LIST. Then she set her alarm for six. In the morning, she would need a plan that did not depend on Dominic waking up, recovering, or choosing to do the right thing.
