“And he let his wife walk up to my garage believing I’d be frightened of the police.”
“That’s what the messages suggest.”
Elijah stared at the image of the text.
“He used his own family as cover.”
“He used a lot of people,” Price said. “That’s becoming clearer every day.”
There was more. In the months before Elias Grant died, a representative of Lakeview had approached him about purchasing the Mustang, then asked for its original chassis photographs. Elias declined both requests. Gregory appeared in correspondence as a supposed adviser to the buyer.
One email from Elias, recovered from an old account with the estate’s permission, contained a sentence Elijah recognized from a hundred garage conversations.
If you’re buying the car, come look at the car. If you’re buying a number, call somebody else.
Elijah smiled despite himself. It was the first real smile since the complaint.
Then he noticed the date. His father had written the email during the final weeks when the doctors were still telling them there might be time for another treatment.
He had been exhausted, frightened, and increasingly unable to work. Yet he had still protected the history of the machine they built together.
“He never told me,” Elijah whispered.
“Maybe he thought it was over,” Price said. “Maybe he didn’t want you worrying. I can’t know.”
Elijah nodded. He appreciated that she refused to invent an answer.
Outside, traffic moved along the street and the ordinary world kept its schedule.
Inside, he finally understood why Gregory had looked so carefully at the Mustang the first afternoon, and why he had asked about numbers rather than horsepower.
CHAPTER 19: LOGAN FINDS OUT WHAT A FAVOR COSTS
Logan learned that his father had known the new neighbor was police chief from a news report describing the investigation. At first he refused to believe it. Then he confronted Gregory in the Hartmans’ kitchen, the same room where Sophie had recorded the conversation.
“You knew?” he asked.
Gregory looked up from a laptop. “Lower your voice.”
“You knew he was chief? The whole time?”
Vivien stood at the sink, gripping a glass so tightly Logan thought it might break. “Your father has been handling a difficult business matter.”
“You told me the guy was some nobody trying to impress the neighborhood.”
“He shouldn’t have been so arrogant,” Vivien said.
Logan looked at her with disbelief. “You called the cops on a police chief. You told them he stole his own car.”
“I followed information we had available.”
“You said you saw him take it.”
No one answered.
“I asked to drive the car because I wanted to,” he said. “But you kept telling me to go back. You said if he refused enough times, people would see him as a problem.”
