Chapter 67: Apartment 2B

Catherine arrived at the apartment at nine the next morning, before any of us had managed more than a few hours of broken sleep.

She had been at Eleanor’s when the call came in and had not gone back to bed. By the time we returned from the fire department’s preliminary report, she had already been on the phone with three contacts, the particular focused efficiency of someone who had spent eight years building a network of people who owed her information and was now using all of it at once.

“The electrical fault story does not hold,” she said, the moment we walked in.

Damien looked at her.

“Tell us,” he said.

“Apartment 2B has been vacant for four months,” Catherine said. “According to the building’s leasing records. No tenant. No utilities account. No reason for an electrical fault because there was no electrical load.” She paused. “Except someone leased it three weeks ago. Cash. Through a management company that does not exist beyond a mailbox in Queens.”

The kitchen was very quiet.

“Three weeks ago,” I said slowly.

That was when the New York publication had confirmed February.

Catherine nodded, reading the thought on my face.

“I do not think this was random,” she said. “And I do not think it was about the paintings specifically, not at first. I think someone needed access to this building, to this floor, and the empty apartment beneath the studio was the most discreet way to get it.”

“For what,” Damien said.

“I do not know yet,” Catherine said. “But the fire department’s preliminary findings note an accelerant. Not consistent with an electrical fault. Consistent with something set deliberately and then, possibly, not entirely controlled by whoever set it.” She paused. “Whoever did this may not have intended a fire that spread to the third floor. They may have intended something smaller. Documents destroyed. A search interrupted before it was finished.”

“A search for what,” I said.

Catherine looked at me.

“I think someone wanted to know what was in this apartment before February,” she said carefully. “Before the story ran. Before the world found out exactly where Mia Santos came from and exactly which diner employed her and exactly whose name might come up in the kind of attention a magazine cover generates.”

I sat down slowly.

“Rosario,” I said.

“I called him this morning,” Catherine said. “Or tried to. The diner’s number has been disconnected since December thirtieth.” She paused. “Rosa called me back. She said Mr. Rosario sold the diner two weeks ago. Quietly. To a buyer she had never heard of, for considerably more than the place was worth, and left without much explanation.”

I thought about Rosario’s name in the footnote of my father’s documents. A sub account. Six years of payments through a Luxembourg entity.

“He has been part of the investigation’s record since November,” I said. “He knew it was coming.”

“He knew the legal process was coming,” Catherine said. “Slow. Manageable, from his perspective, with enough lawyers and enough time. What he could not manage was a magazine cover with a circulation of two million people, with his diner’s name in it, with journalists potentially asking questions about a former employee that led somewhere he very much did not want anyone looking.”

“So he tried to find out what was in this apartment,” Damien said. “Before the story made it a target of attention.”

“That is my theory,” Catherine said. “And whatever he or whoever he hired was looking for, the search went wrong. Or the fire was meant to be small and contained and burn whatever they were searching for, and it was not contained.” She paused. “Either way, the timing is not a coincidence. Three weeks after the cover was confirmed, an empty apartment one floor below the paintings is leased in cash by a shell management company, and a fire starts in it on New Year’s Eve when the building would be least staffed and least watched.”

I looked at the eleven paintings.

Grey with smoke. Intact. Waiting for conservation.

“He could have destroyed them,” I said quietly. “Thirty two years. Rosa’s entire life’s work. Gone, to keep a sub account out of a magazine article.”

Damien’s hand found mine.

“He did not,” he said. “That is what matters this morning.”

Catherine was already on her phone again.

“I am sending everything to the fire marshal’s office and to the lead investigator on the Halliwell case,” she said. “Rosario’s name was already in the record. This connects him to something considerably more serious than financial cooperation with a corrupt network. Arson, attempted destruction of evidence, possibly attempted destruction of property worth, at this point, an amount I am not certain anyone has formally assessed.” She paused. “He will not get far. Cash sales of diners and disconnected phone numbers are the actions of someone who believes he has more time than he actually has.”

By that afternoon, the fire marshal’s office had confirmed Catherine’s theory. Traces of accelerant in 2B, consistent with an attempt to start a contained fire that had, due to faulty understanding of the building’s old wiring, spread further than intended into a shared wall cavity that ran up to the third floor.

Mr. Rosario was located that evening at a motel outside Newark, where he had been staying since selling the diner, apparently still deciding what his next move was going to be. He was taken into custody without incident.

I sat with all of it that night, in the studio with the north facing windows, looking at the new canvas I had started before Christmas and had not touched since.

Damien came and sat beside me.

“How are you,” he said.

I thought about it honestly.

“Angry,” I said. “Not afraid. Angry. He worked alongside me for four years. He knew Rosa’s name was attached to those payments, probably, somewhere in whatever records he kept. He could have told someone, years ago, that there was a connection. Instead he let it sit, until it became inconvenient, and then he tried to burn it.”

“Yes,” Damien said.

“And he almost destroyed her,” I said. “Again. Thirty two years after the first time someone almost erased her completely.”

Damien was quiet for a moment.

“He did not,” he said. “That is the part that matters. Not what he tried to do. What actually happened, which is that the paintings are intact, and the conservation team Isabelle is sending will have them cleaned and ready well before January, and in February the cover will run exactly as planned, and everyone will know exactly what Rosa Santos made and exactly who tried, twice, to make sure nobody ever saw it.”

I looked at him.

“You think the story should include this,” I said.

“I think,” Damien said carefully, “that a man tried to burn a dead woman’s life’s work to protect himself from a magazine article, and the magazine article is going to run anyway, and now it has one more true thing to say about why her work nearly disappeared and why it is so important that it did not.” He held my gaze. “I think Rosa Santos has spent thirty two years being someone other people tried to erase. I think the story should say that plainly. Not as sensation. As fact.”

I thought about that.

About the eleventh painting.

Just the light.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “It should say that.”

Outside the studio windows, the city was quiet in its first day of January, the fireworks long finished, the new year settling into itself.

Catherine called the conservation team the next morning.

The paintings were collected, cleaned, assessed, and confirmed sound within five days.

The grey film came away.

The light, underneath it, was exactly as it had always been.