Chapter 6 - What the Camera Saw
“No,” Owen said. “The representative called. He said the video was a private family matter and there was no reason to keep the raw files.”
Rebecca glanced at me across the conference table.
“Did he say he was speaking for Daniel?”
“Yes. He’d called earlier asking for exclusive delivery. I wrote down his name and the times of both calls.”
“Please keep those notes,” Rebecca said. “And don’t delete or alter anything while we arrange delivery.”
Owen exhaled into the phone.
“I wasn’t going to. But I have another wedding to shoot this weekend, and I need space on my working drives.”
Rebecca asked him to leave the originals where they were until he could provide copies through a secure delivery channel. The board’s review team could then confirm what had been received and preserve it separately. She also asked him for the order, the delivery history, and any instructions he had received about the edit.
After they hung up, I looked at the empty support folder still open on Leah’s screen. For hours, we had been trying to learn why my husband’s birthday party appeared on company books. Now a man who had filmed it was being told the raw record should disappear.
“Can we tell Helena?” I asked.
“We should tell her what Owen reported,” Rebecca said. “Not that Daniel ordered it. We don’t know what his representative told him.”
I nodded, though the distinction took effort. Daniel’s voice was still painfully clear in my memory. The representative’s was not. If I wanted the directors to take this seriously, I could not replace what we knew with what I was certain Daniel would do.
Rebecca sent Helena a short update while Leah shut down her computer. It was well past the time I had told Leah to go home. She packed her bag, then stopped at the door.
“Are you going to watch it?”
“Once,” I said.
She gave me a tired, sympathetic look that I almost couldn’t bear.
By the next morning, Owen had provided the camera files to the review team. He had included the order confirmation, a list of the files he delivered, and a copy of the completed edit. Rebecca arranged for us to view copies in a small meeting room. She made certain we understood which clips came from the cameras and which had been cut together for the finished video.
I had brought my handbag from the hotel. The silver watch was still inside it, in the box I had chosen with such care. I set the bag beneath my chair.
On the screen, the front doors of the mansion opened for a caterer carrying two crates. I recognized the entryway, the flowers, a strip of morning sunlight across the floor. Owen’s cameras had begun recording before the guests arrived.
The images did not know what that house meant to me. For once, that helped.
Leah sat beside me with the expense entries. Rebecca kept a note of the file names and times. We watched staff roll in portable service stations, a lighting crew adjust fixtures, and a rental truck unload equipment at the side entrance.
“That matches the equipment-rental description,” Leah said.
“Does it match the quantity?” Rebecca asked.
“Some of it. I’ll need the itemized list.”
We moved to the evening footage. Owen had filmed guests arriving, servers circulating with trays, Daniel greeting people beneath the chandeliers. He looked delighted with himself. I wondered how many of those guests had been told this was a client reception. I could recognize faces, but a camera couldn’t tell me why they had come.
Then Daniel lifted his glass.
“She doesn’t belong here.”
I heard the laughter again, this time through the meeting-room speakers.
My hand closed around the strap of my handbag. On-screen, Vanessa sat in my chair, her fingers resting near the diamonds at her throat. Daniel stepped behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder.
Rebecca reached toward the controls, waiting for me to decide whether to stop.
I watched through the end of his toast. It took less than a minute. The humiliation had occupied far more of my life than that.
“That’s enough,” I said. “We have the recording. Let’s look at the bills.”
Rebecca paused the video. Leah did not offer comfort she couldn’t give. She pulled the party entries toward us instead.
Owen’s order named the mansion as the event location and Whitmore Technologies as the customer to be billed. The description called it a company reception. A later message from Daniel’s office requested a finished video centered on his birthday toast and guest reactions.
“That doesn’t establish the company paid him,” Leah said. “His invoice is still showing as submitted.”
“Or that he knew the booking was improper,” Rebecca added.
Owen had filmed what he was hired to film. I was grateful he had kept it. I didn’t want gratitude to turn him into a witness to something he couldn’t know.
The staffing supplier’s manager had also provided copies after checking the request with the review team. Its booking correspondence listed our address, the number of servers, and the hours they worked. The invoice number matched the payment request Leah had found the day before. Whitmore Technologies was named for billing; the event was described as a client engagement reception.
In the footage, those servers carried trays through my dining room while Victoria laughed at my expense.
Leah compared their shift times to the invoice.
“The work happened,” she said. “The question is who decided it belonged on our books, and whether company money actually went out.”
She was still tracing the batch response and any later reimbursement. The equipment-rental entry required the same check. Rebecca asked the review team to retain the vendor correspondence alongside the footage, so nobody would have to rely on a clip stripped of the paperwork around it.
I pointed to the still frame of Vanessa.
“Can any of this tell us about the necklace?”
Rebecca shook her head.
“It establishes she wore it that night. We still need a purchase record and a payment source.”
I had seen Daniel show me that necklace and heard him call it my birthday gift. Watching it against Vanessa’s dress made me want an answer immediately. But wanting one did not put a charge on a company statement.
We left the meeting room before lunch. I asked Rebecca not to send the toast to Maya or the other directors as a standalone clip.
“They need to know what we found,” I said. “I don’t need them watching that minute without the records.”
“Helena will receive the relevant files through the review,” Rebecca said. “With the limitations spelled out.”
In the hallway, Vanessa was waiting near the elevators.
She wore a dark jacket and no necklace. When she saw Leah beside us, she looked toward the stairwell.
“Claire, could I speak to you?”
Rebecca did not move away.
“If this concerns company records, she should stay,” I said.
Vanessa swallowed. Up close, she looked younger than she had beneath the party lights, but not too young to understand a ledger.
“Are they examining every expense approval?”
“Yes.”
“Even small ones? Ones assistants entered?”
“I expect the review will follow the records,” Rebecca said. “If you have something relevant, we can arrange for the reviewers to speak with you.”
Vanessa glanced at the meeting-room door.
“I don’t want something I entered to look like I approved it.”
“Then tell them what you entered and what you approved,” I said.
Her eyes met mine briefly. I remembered her laughing beside Daniel. I also remembered how many people in the company depended on someone being willing to tell the truth.
“Would they look at my messages?” she asked.
“I don’t know what they’ll need yet,” Rebecca said. “You should preserve anything related to company expenses. Don’t change or delete it.”
Vanessa’s face tightened.
“I need to get back to my desk.”
She stepped into the elevator before I could ask anything else.
Leah watched the doors close.
“She processed some of the expense coding,” she said quietly. “I don’t know which instructions came from whom.”
“Neither do I,” I said.
I could have gone after Vanessa. I could have demanded to know why she had sat in my chair while Daniel made the room laugh. Instead, I stood there with three questions I couldn’t answer. Pressing her in a hallway would not have made her account more reliable.
Back in finance, Leah returned to the supplier payments. Rebecca called Helena with the narrower conclusions we could support: services for the birthday party appeared on company payment requests, and independent vendor records and footage corroborated that those services were provided at the mansion. Whether the charges had settled, been adjusted, or been reimbursed remained under review.
As Rebecca spoke, I noticed Leah refreshing a banking screen.
“Anything on the staffing charge?” I asked when the call ended.
“Not yet.”
She refreshed it again.
A new request appeared. Leah leaned closer, read across the line, then reached for the payroll schedule she had printed the day before.
“Claire,” she said, “come here.”
The request was marked for an overnight transfer out of the operating account. It was not the questioned payment the bank had held. The amount was $280,000.
May you like
Leah placed the payroll schedule beside it. Friday’s payroll alone required more than that, and the account had only a narrow margin after urgent obligations.
“If this goes through tonight,” she said, turning the screen toward me, “we may not have enough to pay everyone Friday.”
