Chapter 20 - TWO BROTHERS NAMED KEENE
There were two attorneys named Keene in the history of North Quay, and we had been treating them as one. Graham Keene had managed the escrow transfers, while his younger brother, Peter, had supervised parts of the charity's dissolution. Both had worked with the same clients at different times. The anonymous note was correct about the distinction, though we still did not know who had sent it.
Selma called a meeting to separate their roles. I drew a timeline on a whiteboard, using one color for Graham, another for Peter, and a third for unknown signatories. When we finished, the years looked less like a single scheme and more like an office where responsibility passed from one desk to another without anyone acknowledging the handoff.
Peter Keene had died nine years earlier. Graham was retired. He lived outside Chicago and had declined two interview requests through counsel. The law firm stated that it would comply with lawful document production but disputed suggestions of misconduct.
"We are not here to convict a surname," Selma said. "We are here to reconstruct transactions."
Her precision irritated me that morning. I wanted somebody to be responsible. But Rosa, who had more right to anger than I did, nodded in agreement.
A detailed review of the red ledger revealed that June had sometimes abbreviated both names with G.K. because the initials referred to their shared firm's file code, not an individual. I felt another hot wave of embarrassment. Our most dramatic apparent clue had never been as specific as we wanted.
Anika arranged an interview with Alice Renn about the anonymous notes. Alice denied sending them and volunteered samples of her writing for comparison. She also remembered a junior clerk at Keene's firm who had visited June repeatedly in the final months of her life. His name was Thomas Vale, unrelated to the Moretti family as far as she knew.
Thomas had recently retired from a regional archives service. Unlike Graham, he answered our letter promptly. He agreed to meet with Selma and an attorney and brought his own retained notes.
"I was a clerk," he said. "I delivered papers. I wasn't told what most of them meant. But I remember a woman at the framing shop asking why the estate needed originals when it already had copies."
"What did you say?" Selma asked.
"That I didn't know. She looked disappointed, and then she gave me a duplicate of the payment schedule in a sealed envelope. She told me to keep it until someone asked the right question."
"Do you still have it?"
Thomas looked down. "No. I gave it back to Peter Keene when I changed jobs. I thought that was the responsible thing to do."
He swallowed. "I've regretted it ever since."
I looked at the old man sitting across the table. He had lived with an ordinary mistake for decades. He was not a villain. But his decision might have helped the missing schedule stay missing.
Selma asked him about the anonymous letters. He denied sending them. Anika found no basis to accuse him.
At home I tried to explain the case to Mom while she folded clean towels. She listened, then asked a question none of us had posed aloud.
"Do the families want the painting in the museum?"
"I think most support it. We haven't asked everyone."
"Then perhaps you should. You've been so busy following the paper you might forget the people still have opinions about what happens next."
I wrote the question in my notebook.
At the next community meeting, Rosa proposed inviting families to help shape the public account of the painting's history. Participation would be voluntary. Nobody would be asked to tell a story of hardship for an audience's benefit. They could request anonymity, decline photographs, or contribute only factual corrections.
The proposal changed the mood of the room. One woman wanted her father's name included because he had organized the original rent campaign. Another wanted no names, only proof that the promised assistance had existed. A third asked whether the museum could host free art classes for local children rather than another expensive reception.
Mara said yes to exploring the idea, subject to the museum's budget and the community's involvement. She did not promise what she could not deliver.
The anonymous notes stopped arriving for several weeks. I tried not to interpret the silence. Anika kept the case open, and I kept going to class.
Then Claire visited with a cardboard box of documents her aunt Celia had found in a storage closet. Among old office calendars was a visitor list for a meeting at North Quay the day before the disputed escrow authorization. At the bottom of the page, in faded ink, was the name of a person none of us expected to see.
Luca Moretti.
He had been there as a young man, decades before he claimed to remember only oranges and a blue door.
May you like
I stared at the entry. The simplest explanation was that he had forgotten. Another possibility was that somebody had used his name.
This time I did not build a theory first. I called Luca and asked him what he remembered.
