Casey picked up the photograph.
Her blood went cold.
Brody Kane.
Marcus saw what she was holding.
“Casey.”
She turned.
“Brody is your nephew?”
Marcus closed his eyes briefly.
“By marriage.”
“You told me you didn’t know the men.”
“I never said that.”
“You let me describe him yesterday.”
“I was trying to understand what happened.”
“He almost cracked Walter’s skull open.”
“Brody has been trouble since he was fifteen.”
“Did you send him?”
Marcus looked genuinely wounded.
“No.”
Casey wanted to believe him.
Eight years of coffee.
Eight years of advice.
Eight years of Marcus telling her she was better than she thought she was.
Then Walter arrived.
He saw the dismantled Panhead.
His face changed.
“They know.”
“Know what?” Casey asked.
Walter looked at the opened frame.
“Frank left something inside.”
Eleanor Marlowe did not look surprised when Casey confronted her.
That frightened Casey more than anything else.
Her grandmother sat at the kitchen table beneath the yellow light, hospital envelopes stacked beside her.
“You knew Grandpa worked with Walter Doyle.”
Eleanor folded her hands.
“Yes.”
“You knew he helped build the Panhead.”
“Yes.”
“You knew Henry Garrison.”
“Yes.”
Casey stepped backward.
Her chest felt tight.
“Why did everyone decide I didn’t deserve to know my own family?”
Eleanor looked tired.
Not physically tired.
Older than tired.
“Because knowledge has consequences.”
“Someone attacked Walter over that motorcycle.”
Eleanor’s eyes closed.
Casey whispered, “You expected this.”
“I prayed I was wrong.”
“What’s inside the frame?”
“I don’t know.”
“Grandma.”
“I don’t.”
Eleanor looked at her.
“But three weeks before Frank died, a man came here.”
“What man?”
“Henry Garrison.”
Casey stopped breathing.
“He wanted Frank’s toolbox. Frank told him to leave.”
“Did Marcus know?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you tell police?”
“Because Frank died peacefully in bed three weeks later. There was nothing to report.”
She hesitated.
“But the night Henry came, Frank told me something.”
“What?”
Eleanor’s voice barely rose above a whisper.
“He said, ‘If Walter ever brings the red bike home, tell him the truth is still riding inside it.’”
Walter refused to cut open the frame at Garrison Auto.
So they took the Panhead to the original Doyle workshop.
It had been closed for twenty-three years.
Dust covered everything.
Old welding masks hung from nails.
Hand-painted signs faded on brick walls.
A wooden workbench stood beneath a cracked window.
Walter touched it as though greeting a ghost.
“Frank built this bench.”
Casey said nothing.
They removed the tank.
Then the wiring.
Using a small inspection scope, Casey worked through an access opening.
“There’s something inside.”
Walter leaned closer.
“What?”
“Metal.”
An hour later they exposed a carefully sealed section of the frame tube.
