Chapter 4 Amelia
FOUR
AMELIA
Little Red—her father’s name for the family sedan—rattled up the steep road toward the Dauer estate. Somewhere a bolt was loose, so it rap-a-tapped with too much gas and whined whenever it rained. Amelia gripped the wheel as wind rocked the car.
“Momma, I don’t think Little Red is long for the world.”
“Don’t tell your father that,” her mom said and flipped down the visor mirror. She ran a comb through her auburn hair a shade darker than Amelia’s and inspected her teeth for lipstick. “He was on the phone when I went to say goodbye. Did he say why he’s not coming?”
Work was the enduring excuse, but one her dad was judicious in wielding. He’d never missed the gala despite his growing disdain for Rich’s opulence. Last year, he’d sulked in the corner while Amelia shuttled him champagne and crudité.
“Something to do with Rich. I overheard them talking.”
Talking was an understatement, one that sopped up the distress in what Amelia had overheard. At Rich’s name, her mom hummed a response and gnawed her bottom lip.
Someone once told her that married couples look alike after a while. That didn’t happen to Amelia’s parents. Instead, her mom inherited her husband’s moods, so silent gloom lived on in the passenger seat as the car puttered through the Dauer estate’s iron gate.
Nestled against Lake Oswego, the estate was impressive enough that Charlotte Dauer named it Lake Rose Manor. Amelia found that a strange thing, naming a house. Then again, some places demanded it, palaces with heritage and bloodlines erected in stone and splendor. Lake Rose Manor wasn’t that.
It was a modernist monstrosity, boxy and sharp and lacking a soul. To Richard, a home had to be an artistic investment, so he commissioned a house that menaced over lush grounds while he dwelled in a pied-à-terre in the city. Amelia found that just as strange.
Despite its charming name, Lake Rose Manor didn’t tolerate warm flourishes, only open spaces and lonely echoes. Even the hedges were pruned in unnaturally straight lines. It’d always been at odds with itself, but tonight tried at softness with sweet touches on an austere canvas.
Peony garlands festooned square columns flanking the entryway.
The blooms burst in vivid color against grey stone, and their delicate scent infused the night.
A dozen tall, wrought iron candelabras lined the walkway to the manor’s entrance, though only a few still radiated hazy globes. The wind snuffed out the rest.
“You think it’s me?” Amelia asked halfway to the door. “The reason he didn’t come?”
Her mom slowed her pace. The chiffon layers of her skirt whipped around her slender frame and her hair lifted on the wind. “Of course not, my love. Why would you think that?”
Why wouldn’t she?
The letter from Harvard Law came one rainy spring morning, and the weight of the paper alone said she was in. Harvard didn’t send rejections on linen paper signed with a fountain pen. Her father had read the only word that mattered—congratulations—and exhausted his black book with the news.
“My girl got in,” he’d told anyone who’d listen.
For Amelia, cold doubt had crept in unannounced. She smiled big and put it to bed, but on sleepless nights, it tore her to ribbons from the inside out. When she confessed she wasn’t Cambridge-bound, he raged with words he couldn’t take back, and Amelia could’ve died on the spot but cried instead.
No one dies from rejection, though, and tears pass like rain, so she stood her ground but learned a painful lesson. Fathers only tolerated self-discovery in sons. “That’s my boy making his way,” they’d say. Trailblazer. Groundbreaker.
In daughters, it was the primrose path to ruin. Poor baby. Lost little soul.
“He probably told half these people about Harvard.” Amelia motioned to the guests up ahead dressed in their finest. “If he came, people would ask, and he’d have to tell them I dropped out.”
“It’s none of their damn business, and I’ll tell them that myself!” Her mom was soft-spoken with a gentle heart. There was fire to be found in her, though, and it burned bright with fights not yet had. She composed herself then asked, “You sure you wanna go?”
“Arizona? Of course. The job’s lined up and everything.”
The job was an editing gig at a local newspaper. The pay was decent, the hours reasonable, and she’d have the freedom to make a serious run at publishing her poetry. The work didn’t matter so much as the escape.
Some nights, Amelia dreamed banal things like flat tires or missing paperwork thwarted her plans. The moment felt a bit like that, and her mom smiled as if sorry to dredge up bad dreams.
“I meant the party.”
Amelia glanced back at the winding driveway as lightning cracked the sky.
There was the rip cord if she wanted it, but the valet had already left with Little Red, and in polite society, no one ditched a party that early.
Then again, Amelia didn’t belong in that echelon.
In a clearance rack cocktail dress, she didn’t even look the part.
“What if we make our rounds for an hour then leave?” she offered, and her mother promptly agreed.
They split up inside to divide and conquer. Amelia cut through the kitchen or the mausoleum, as her dad called it to mock Rich’s brutalist taste. With its sparse countertops, the room wanted for a pulse that it only achieved during Rich’s parties.
In the great room, a sea of people milled about in glittering gowns and tailored suits.
The hollowed-out space opened to the second and third-floor halls above and light installations reflected dully on polished concrete floors below.
At the far end of the room, a tuxedoed man played a grand piano next to tall windows overlooking the lake.
Amelia edged along the museum-like walls accosted with abstract art but stopped at a new addition.
Rendered in blood red and black, the painting depicted a demon, its face vaguely human except for luminous eyes that pierced the canvas.
A gold plaque at the bottom of the frame read “Philippe Velasco Collection.”
Of course. The painting was salt in a wound for her father to find.
Several months ago, Amelia’s father secured a grand jury’s indictment for Philippe, the man at the helm of the Velasco family.
“Flip-Flop Philippe,” the papers called him when he sought a plea deal.
Rich Dauer was known for his defense of indefensible people, most notably Philippe.
It’d caused strife with Amelia’s father, their ideological differences too much to overcome.
“It was a gift,” a man commented behind her.
Amelia turned to a barrel-chested stranger with a gap-toothed smile. He slicked back a tuft of unkempt brown hair, and fleshy belly peeked through the buttons of a wrinkled shirt.
“Philippe’s been offloading assets since the indictment.” He tipped his champagne flute to the painting and studied it up close. “Bold of Rich to flaunt this.”
“You must not know him very well.”
Rich would call it high art. He’d said that about his twelve-foot tall, blinding white canvas with a fist-sized red circle in the middle. “Looks like a Maxi-Pad on a light day,” Amelia had joked, but it’d gone over like a lead balloon, up in flames when it hit the floor.
“I know him well enough. Martin Kranski,” the man said and offered a limp handshake. “You’re Cal’s kid, right?”
“Yeah. Amelia.”
“He’s a good man, your Pop. I’ve known him for years. Burt too.” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Shame what happened.”
Amelia agreed with a nod and an awkward beat of silence passed between them. Martin seemed pleasant enough but sipped his drink that looked unnatural in his hand—the glass too small, champagne not his drink of choice—and shifted unsteadily on his feet.
“Actually, I’m glad I ran into you,” he said and fumbled in his back pocket. “I was planning to reach out. I’ve got some questions about the work you did for Dauer and Shaw.”
Slotted between his index and middle finger, Martin handed Amelia a business card. A gold seal caught the light and glossy black letters announced his title—FBI Special Agent.
“I understand you were one of Burt’s interns and may know about a sensitive matter he was looking into at the time of his death.”
Warmth drained from Amelia’s cheeks, and she skimmed the room for a friendly face. Anyone would do. She stared at another wallflower a few feet away, an older gentleman in a paisley waistcoat eating a bacon-wrapped scallop. Please. The man glanced at her but wandered off. Fuck.
Amelia cradled her elbows and feigned ignorance. “I did basic research, case law and whatnot. I don’t know about a sensitive matter.”
The best lies were woven with truth. Yes, she did his research, made his coffee, listened to his stories. But there was also that folder and how Burt had somehow become dangerously entangled in the Velasco-Moriarty feud.
Martin narrowed his eyes and drifted closer. His thin lips sunk in a frown. “It’s very important we talk.”
Amelia stumbled into the demon at her back. She gripped the gilded frame to steady herself. Burt had warned her not to tell the police anything but said nothing about the FBI. Amelia didn’t know the conversion rate between the two, but it didn’t matter. She’d promised to keep his secret and would.
“It was nice to meet you,” Amelia said and meant to duck away, but Martin blocked her path.
“I know about the folder. Burt didn’t want your name attached to it, so he told you to leave it alone. He had the Velascos’ war plans, knew who’s pulling the strings from the great beyond, and now you do too. You need to understand the target this puts on your back, the danger you’re in.”
Amelia calmly shook her head with a wooden smile, but the business card crushed in her fist, and her voice wavered.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Come by my office on Monday. We need to talk.”
“I’ll be gone by then. Besides, you seem to have what you need.”
Amelia thrust the crumpled business card into Martin’s clammy hand and turned to leave. She had even managed a few brisk steps, but the boom of his voice stopped her.
“Emory Holt.”
Amelia’s pulse pounded in her ears. She should have walked away but turned around instead. Martin downed the rest of his champagne with an annoyed flick of his wrist.
“I see that name rings a bell.” Pleased as punch, he grinned and ambled toward her. “Burt destroyed the folder. That means you’re the only person alive who knows what was inside it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“If I were Emory, I’d want to know what was in that folder. His private jet landed at PDX this afternoon.” Martin hovered close, the booze thick on his breath. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Emory Holt is coming tonight. Dollars to donuts, he’ll be dying to meet you.”