Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN WHO PAID HERSELF
The first time I saw the red ledger, it was behind a clear protective sleeve on Detective Ruiz's desk. Its cloth cover had faded to the color of dried roses. The corners were frayed, and the paper smelled faintly of dust and machine oil.
I didn't touch it. Ruiz had invited me and my attorney, Helen Brooks, to review a limited set of photographs after a new witness mentioned my father. Sofia attended separately with Diana Park. Gabriel was being interviewed at another office about his six-year-old loan, and the Vescari name no longer opened every door in the building.
"You don't have to comment on anything you didn't personally see," Helen reminded me. "And you can stop at any point."
I nodded. It was a relief to have someone whose job was to speak for me, not for the foundation or Gabriel.
Ruiz displayed a photograph of a ledger page. The entry was dated six years earlier, two months after Elena Vescari died. It showed a payment made to CELESTE MOREAU, then twenty-five, with the description ARCHIVAL INTERVIEW AND FAMILY PROFILE CONSULTING.
"Does that name mean anything to you beyond your employer's relationship?" Ruiz asked.
"Only what I've learned since the wedding. I never knew her before she moved into the mansion."
"Your father may have encountered her during the original restoration work. We're checking."
I examined the copy. "Why would a restoration company pay someone to interview Gabriel's family?"
"That's one of our questions," Ruiz said. "We've also obtained records suggesting the payment was made through a company controlled by Lucien Moreau. That doesn't tell us the full purpose."
The next photograph showed a small receipt tucked between ledger pages. Celeste had signed for a folder of Vescari family correspondence. In the margin, someone had written an instruction to return the material before Gabriel noticed it was gone.
"That sounds less like consulting and more like surveillance," I said.
Helen rested a hand on the table. "That's an interpretation, Ruby. Let the investigator tell you what the evidence supports."
I took a breath. "Right. I don't know what it means."
Ruiz gave me a small approving nod. "Knowing what you don't know is useful."
Then she showed us a photograph of a sealed workroom. The police had recovered several padded cases behind a false shelving panel at the former print shop. A court-authorized forensic examination had identified eight stones matching distinctive inventory descriptions from the Riverlight Collection. Four major gemstones remained unaccounted for.
"What about the rest of the mirror?" I asked.
"The experts are continuing their inventory," Ruiz said. "We won't declare anything missing or recovered before they complete the comparisons."
I thought of the forty-nine-foot display filling the ballroom, turning fifty wealthy guests into tiny figures beneath a tower of glass. It hadn't needed to be magical. It only needed to be overwhelming enough to stop anyone from looking closely.
The door opened. Another detective handed Ruiz a note. She read it without changing expression and excused herself.
When she returned, she said, "Mara Vidal has contacted counsel through an attorney. She's prepared to provide a statement and supporting records. We haven't evaluated it yet."
"Is she being charged?" I asked.
"I can't discuss charging decisions. I can tell you we're examining her involvement, not assuming cooperation erases it."
Outside the station, Helen walked with me at the pace of my crutches. She hadn't asked for photographs with Gabriel or offered to solve my life. She had explained workers' compensation possibilities, medical documentation, and the importance of not signing a release under pressure. I liked her more with every ordinary sentence.
"The mansion offered to keep paying my wages," I told her. "Can I accept that and still bring a claim if I need to?"
"We'll review the terms carefully," she said. "You shouldn't have to choose between paying rent and preserving your rights."
I breathed out. For the first time in days, a problem had an answer that didn't require me to be brave. It required forms, records, and someone who understood them.
At home, Dad was bent over a photograph of the original frame. He had taped four small slips of paper to the table, each labeled with a stone's inventory number. I asked what he was doing.
"Trying to remember the four settings the police say may be empty," he replied. "Those mounts were redesigned after the first exhibition. They had protective sleeves nobody would notice from the front."
"Could they be hiding inside the frame?"
"Not if the technicians have examined the cavities properly. But someone who copied the plans might overlook the way those sleeves can be separated from the panel."
I sat down slowly. "You think Celeste knew that?"
"Somebody had the old drawings. If she helped catalog them, she could have learned."
"Why would she spend years on this?"
Dad placed his pencil down. "Because people who are willing to steal a little often spend a long time imagining how to steal a lot. Or because somebody taught her that the only way to be safe was to own enough to hurt everyone else."
I looked at him. "You sound sad for her."
"I can be sad about the person she became and still want her held accountable."
That afternoon Sofia came over with takeout sandwiches. She told me Gabriel's questioning had ended. He wasn't under arrest, but investigators had seized copies of relevant business records and were reviewing the loan documents. His own counsel had advised him not to speak publicly until the records were verified.
"How is he taking it?" I asked.
"Badly, which may be good for him. He can't intimidate a missing document into appearing. He has to wait while other people do their jobs."
She opened her sandwich, then set it down untouched. "I saw the invoice to Celeste. She was twenty-five when my mother died. Gabriel met her four years later at a charity auction. She told him they had never crossed paths before."
"Did she know your mother?"
"I don't think so. But Lucien certainly did. He had access to our family correspondence and our debts."
"Then Celeste might have studied Gabriel before she approached him."
"That's what investigators are considering. It changes how I understand every birthday, every holiday, every time she told Gabriel I didn't care enough to visit."
I thought of Sofia struggling to reach her brother from Geneva. Celeste hadn't only hidden a marriage. She'd used loneliness as a tool, turning distance into a weapon neither sibling could see.
Sofia broke her sandwich in half. "Gabriel asked me to tell you something. The foundation has offered him a position on the recovery committee, and he refused. He says he shouldn't oversee an audit of a transaction he signed."
"That sounds right."
"It is. He didn't always know how to step aside."
There was a knock. Three measured taps against our apartment door. My heart jumped despite myself. Dad rose slowly to answer, but I stopped him until we checked the peephole. It was Vincent, holding a sealed evidence-request notice.
"Detective Ruiz wants to know whether you kept the original grocery receipt from the wedding delivery," he said to me. "You mentioned the blue-striped crate passing your cart. The supplier's delivery record could establish the time."
I blinked. "I put the receiving slips in the pantry binder."
"The binder was collected. They're asking whether you made any notes on your copy."
I remembered that I'd written one thing in the margin: delivery man asked for east lift, not ballroom. I described it, and Vincent recorded the information to pass through the proper channel.
As he turned to leave, his phone rang. He answered and listened with his shoulders growing tense.
"Sofia," he said when he finished, "we have a problem."
"What kind?"
"Customs has been alerted to a shipment that may contain the four missing stones. The manifest names a private charter scheduled to depart tonight."
"Celeste's flight?"
"Not exactly. The flight she booked to Nice was canceled after the wedding. This aircraft belongs to a company controlled by Lucien. The destination is Luxembourg."
Sofia stared at him. "Then why would Celeste book Nice?"
Vincent glanced at Dad, then at me. "There may have been two competing plans. Lucien expected the stones to go to his company. The investigators believe Celeste was arranging a separate exit with Adrian and her brother."
"She was planning to rob her own father," I said.
"Possibly," Vincent answered. "We can't know until the records are checked. But the shipping lists don't match."
Sofia stood. "Are the authorities watching the charter?"
"The relevant agencies have the information. That's all we know."
I stared at the Riverlight drawings. For days I'd imagined Celeste and Lucien as two hands of the same thief. Now the hands appeared to be pulling in opposite directions, each willing to sacrifice the other for a few stones.
Dad tapped a pencil against the table. "If four stones are still missing, make sure the investigators know about the protective sleeves. The outward dimensions could match a legitimate empty mount."
Vincent wrote it down.
The moment he left, Sofia's phone lit up with a message from an unknown number.
TELL GABRIEL I NEVER PLANNED TO BOARD THE NICE FLIGHT. ADRIAN WAS MY COVER. THE FOUR STONES AREN'T WHERE MY FATHER THINKS.
Below that was a photograph of Celeste in an ordinary brown coat, holding a small case beside a public train station clock.
May you like
It was the first time I'd seen her without diamonds.
And the first time she looked frightened of someone other than Gabriel.
