Chapter 5 - Silence in the Suite
An hour after the chaos at St. Jude’s, the grand cathedral was empty.
The one hundred twenty guests had dispersed into confused, whispering clusters outside, scrambling to cancel dinner reservations and process the unbelievable spectacle they had just witnessed. The formal reception at the country club was canceled before the appetizers could even be laid out.
Mark and I were back in our quiet, sunlit apartment downtown.
I was still wearing the vintage ivory gown. The silk at my waist was stained with a small, dark crescent of dried blood from my split lip, and my cheek throbbed with a dull, hot ache where Evelyn’s ring had caught me.
I sat on the edge of our low-slung bed, staring at my reflection in the full-length mirror while Mark stood beside me with a bowl of warm water and a sterile cloth. He moved with infinite gentleness, cleaning the trace of blood from my lip and applying a cool compress to my swelling cheek.
Neither of us spoke. The silence in the room was dense, weighted with unasked questions and the lingering shock of the arrest. Evelyn was currently sitting in a holding cell at the local precinct, screaming about her civil rights and demanding her lawyer while the magistrate sorted out the assault charge.
Suddenly, Mark stopped moving. His eyes dropped from my face down to my waist.
“Clara,” he whispered, his voice dropping an octave into tactical seriousness. “Look at your waist.”
I looked down into the mirror.
Where Evelyn’s fingernails had clawed desperately at my dress during her assault in the sanctuary, the outer layer of antique silk had torn slightly along the left side seam.
Protruding from the tear was a thick, rigid section of inner lining that did not match the rest of the dress’s delicate, lightweight construction. It felt bulky, stiff, and entirely out of place in a vintage garment.
Mark reached out, touching the strange protrusion gently with the tips of his fingers.
“That isn't normal reinforcement, Clara,” he murmured, his pilot’s intuition kicking into high gear. “That’s something hidden.”
He walked over to his tactical gear bag by the closet and pulled out a small, razor-sharp pocket utility knife with a locking blade. He knelt beside me on the floor, looking up into my eyes for permission.
“Can I?” he asked quietly.
I nodded, my breath catching in my throat.
With surgical precision, Mark slid the tip of the blade beneath a cluster of old, yellowed stitches along the torn inner seam of the lining. With a soft snip-snip, the threads parted, revealing a dark, concealed pocket sewn directly into the interior structural band of the dress.
Inside the pocket was a flat, heavy object wrapped securely in thick oilcloth and sealed shut with old, yellowed tailoring tape.
May you like
My hands began to shake so violently I could barely hold my coffee mug on the nightstand.
Mark carefully lifted the oilcloth package out of the hidden lining, placed it flat on the bedspread between us, and peeled back the brittle tape.
