Chapter 3 - Room 4B Holds A Forgotten Man
Room 4B was in the old servants’ wing.
Lorenzo had been told it contained archived linens and damaged
furniture.
The key was missing from the household cabinet.
Mrs. Gable claimed renovations made the room unsafe.
Nora carried a duplicate.
Lorenzo asked where she got it.
“The man inside gave it to me.”
They went upstairs with two security officers and the estate physician.
Nora unlocked the door.
The smell reached them first.
Medicine.
Dust.
Old wool.
A thin elderly man sat beside the radiator in a wheelchair.
His hair was white.
One side of his face sagged from an old stroke.
But his eyes sharpened when he saw Lorenzo.
“Enzo.”
Lorenzo stopped.
Almost nobody called him that.
Not since childhood.
The old man lifted a trembling hand.
“You finally came.”
Lorenzo knew him.
Carlo Vescari.
His father’s former accountant.
Officially, Carlo had died eleven years earlier.
Lorenzo had attended a memorial Mass.
There had been no body because the family was told Carlo died abroad.
Yet he was here.
Inside Lorenzo’s house.
Alive.
Lorenzo turned toward Nora.
“How long?”
“Since before I started.”
“Which was?”
“Five months ago.”
“Who feeds him?”
“I do. Sometimes Mateo from the kitchen.”
“Who authorized this?”
Nora looked toward the hallway.
“Mrs. Gable says your father did.”
Lorenzo’s father had been dead six years.
Carlo began laughing.
A broken, breathless sound.
“No.”
He looked at Lorenzo.
“Your father put me here.”
May you like
Then his expression hardened.
“But Gable is the reason I never got out.”
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