Grade-A Plot Hole (The Cartwright Brothers #2)

Chapter One

Stephen

People had told me it would be hot in New York in the summer, but dictators had nothing on this kind of oppression.

I’d considered taking up religion just so I could thank God for the air conditioning in the office and my apartment when I first arrived two weeks ago.

And since it had been a toss-up as to whether I would get more dehydrated on the thirty minute walk from Wall Street to Little Italy or by spending half that time on the subway – deep in the bowels of the earth, breathing in everyone else’s sweat and carbon dioxide – I’d gone for the Big Apple’s version of the Underground.

At least the subway cars were more spacious than the older tubes back in London, even if it was just as busy, and I’d minimised the risk of sunstroke.

I got on at Broad Street and three stops later, surfaced in Canal Street to a completely different atmosphere than I’d experienced during my stay, so far.

I’d hardly seen anything of New York other than my apartment near the Brooklyn Bridge, my office, and a couple of bars that I’d been to with my new work colleagues.

The area was lively but not as overrun with tourists taking photographs and generally getting underfoot of the workers who were in a hurry.

The red bricked buildings were smaller, with fire escapes zigzagging up the sides of them.

There were market stores on every corner and, of course, dozens of Italian restaurants, their striped awnings pulled out over small tables and chairs crammed onto the pavement.

The smell of tomato sauce and basil drifted through the humid air but I couldn’t appreciate the aroma.

My stomach was a knot, my mouth dry from more than lack of water.

There was no turning back though. This was the whole reason I was here.

No one had ever warned me how much rigmarole there would be to deal with when someone died and left you as the executor of their will.

Perhaps my mum would have when she got older but she probably hadn’t felt it was necessary when she was still in her early fifties.

As it was, it felt like I’d barely had time to breathe after a stupid accident took her from us prematurely at the end of last summer.

Between the postmortem and the funeral arrangements, the probate red-tape, the clearance and storage of everything in the family house, the sale of the family house, not to mention an eventful Christmas - there had been one task I had not been able to get around to until this moment in time - ten months later.

Back when the solicitor had read my mum’s will, we’d found out that she had left an oddly specific sum of money to my biological father.

A man who had disappeared from my life when I was three years old.

I’d had no clue where to find him. No one had heard anything from or about him since he left.

Or so we’d believed. Then, when I’d been clearing out the house, I found a large Jiffy bag with his name and address on it – here in New York – sealed up in the corner of the top shelf of Mum’s wardrobe.

I didn’t know how old the envelope was. The writing on it was faded, though still clear enough that I could recognise it as my mum’s slashing style of cursive.

I could almost see her writing it, the same way she did when she’d had to fill out any form or even write a shopping list, like she was angry with the stationery, but whenever I’d made a sarcastic observation along those lines, she’d always look up with a smile…

Anyway, it was the clue I needed to fulfil one of her last wishes and I told my brother Nick I’d take care of it.

Trevor Moorcroft was my wastrel of a father after all, not his.

I’d been planning a weekend away once things quietened down in work, but the stars aligned and when the firm announced they were looking for someone to go on secondment to New York, filling in for another VP while he went on paternity leave, I’d taken them up on it.

Then I put it to the back of my mind, much the same way the envelope had been tucked at the back of my mum’s wardrobe.

But now that envelope was in my laptop case, secured tightly under my arm as I threaded my way through the neighbourhood in search of Baxter Street.

And my father. Who I had only the vaguest memories of.

The image of him in my mind was mostly constructed from a couple of photos my mum reluctantly showed me as a child.

I could have walked past him countless times and never even realised.

It turned out to be a short road in comparison to other streets that went on for eight blocks or more; trees lined it along one side and many of the shops had a polished look that spoke of recent renovation.

Every so often there was a gap for an entrance to the apartments on the upper floors and I checked each one over and over but couldn’t find the correct building or number to match the address on the envelope.

Heat travelled up through the leather soles of my shoes, sweat gathering inside my shirt collar, as I squinted up at the signs and the numbers wishing I’d brought my sunglasses to combat the sun glaring back at me from the metal signage.

Finally, I stopped outside a small entrance to a parking lot, which I presumed was where the apartment building should have been.

So, either the apartments were gone, replaced by the parking lot – or my father had lied when he left a forwarding address with my mum.

I knew which one I thought was most likely, but it didn’t really matter.

All that mattered was that he wasn’t here…

and I didn’t know where to start looking for him.