Chapter 8 - Where She Hid It Earlier
I didn't say it right away when Dad came back to my room. I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands folded over my pink dress and watched him close the door softly behind him, the way he always did when he didn't want Lorraine to hear.
He knelt down so we were eye level. He didn't ask me if I was okay. He just looked at me and waited.
"She didn't have it at dinner," I said. My voice was smaller than I wanted it to be. "Before dinner. I saw her with it earlier. Upstairs."
Dad nodded once. "Where upstairs, sweetheart?"
I tried to remember exactly how it had looked. The dressing suite off their bedroom was cool and smelled like Lorraine's perfume. She'd been standing by the mirror with her black clutch open on the counter.
"She opened the vent," I said. "The little white panel on the wall by the floor. She pushed it and it came off. She slipped something white and silver inside. Like the card. But it was in something."
He didn't move for a second. His hand was still lightly on my shoulder, his silver watch catching the light from my bedside lamp.
"Show me," he said.
He stood and held out his hand. I slipped mine into his. It was warm and steady, and I held on tight as we walked out into the hallway. The music and the low murmur of the donors downstairs had gotten louder again. Lorraine wasn't in the hall. Her bedroom door was cracked open and the light was on, but I could hear her heels clicking faintly down the staircase toward the dining room.
Dad pushed the dressing suite door open. The room was neat, everything put back the way Lorraine liked it. White counters, a row of jewelry boxes, the vent panel low on the far wall beneath the window, painted the same color as the wall so you almost didn't see it.
"There," I whispered, pointing.
He let go of my hand and crouched beside it. He ran his fingers along the edge of the panel. It wasn't screwed in anymore. He pressed the bottom corner and the whole thing popped loose with a soft click.
Inside was dark and dusty. Dad pulled his phone from his suit pocket and turned on the flashlight. The light caught on something white tucked against the metal duct.
He reached in with two fingers and pulled it out. It wasn't the card. It was an envelope, long and white, with a raised gold seal in the corner I recognized from the papers Dad kept in his office. The foundation crest. The envelope was empty, but when he turned it over, there were faint silver smudges along the edge where something had been slid in and out. And along the flap, a clear print in what looked like Lorraine's pale foundation.
"Empty envelope," he said quietly, more to himself than to me. He didn't touch the flap more than he had to. He held it up so I could see. "This is what she put in there?"
I nodded. "She had the silver card. She put it in that, then put that in the wall. Then at dinner she had the clutch."
That was when I realized why she'd said what she said at the table. Be staff, sweetheart. If I wasn't supposed to be there, no one would listen if I said I'd seen her hide it.
Dad stared at the envelope for a long moment. His jaw tightened just a little. Then he took a breath and his face smoothed again.
"You did exactly right telling me," he said.
He pulled the black clutch from where he'd tucked it under his arm after we'd left the dining room. The silver card still stuck out from the top. He laid the clutch on the counter, slid the card out carefully with his knuckle, and held it next to the envelope. The size matched. The embossed silver matched the smudge on the paper.
He took three photos with his phone, slow and careful. One of the open vent with the empty space inside, one of the envelope with the seal and the fingerprints showing, one of the envelope next to the card and clutch on the counter. The flash made the diamond on his ring glint.
"Come with me," he said after he'd turned the flash off.
We went together to his home office at the end of the hall. It was the one room Lorraine never rearranged. Dark wood, a big desk, the safe built into the wall behind a painting. He knelt again to my height before he opened it.
"I'm going to keep these together where no one can move them," he told me. He spun the dial, and the heavy door clicked open. Inside were folders and a small stack of envelopes, but he cleared a space in front.
He placed the black clutch, the silver card, and now the empty white envelope with the gold seal inside, side by side. He closed the safe door and spun the dial again until it locked.
He looked at me then, his hands on my shoulders.
"You were seen tonight," he said. "And you will be believed. That envelope proves she moved the pass from the tower to her clutch herself. That's intent, Emma. You gave us that."
May you like
I felt my eyes get watery again, but not the same way as at the table. I nodded and he pulled me into a hug. His suit jacket smelled like cedar and dinner.
Downstairs, the chandelier light reflected all the way up the stairwell, and I could hear Lorraine's laugh, bright and practiced, as she returned to the donors. She didn't know the vent was empty now.
