Chương 8
Another said he threatened to fire her over a broken vase.
Neither story canceled the other.
Michael and the technology team preserved the east-wing access records.
The magnetic sensor on the cream-and-gold door had recorded hundreds of openings and closings.
More troubling were the overnight periods when the door remained closed for six, seven, sometimes nine hours.
The records did not prove anyone had been locked inside.
They did prove the room had been used far more often than Grant claimed.
A cloud backup showed the same pattern stretching nearly two years.
The private camera was traced to a consumer account registered under a variation of Grant’s email address.
Police took the device under authority Damian did not ask Mara to explain because she was already annoyed with him for asking too many questions.
The financial records were worse.
Mara’s team found vendor payments routed through two shell companies.
Claire’s eleven thousand dollars appeared quickly.
Grant’s suspected amount did not.
It was closer to four hundred seventy thousand.
Damian stared at the number.
Mara sat across from him in the library with a laptop open.
“Before you explode,” she said, “remember we are not investigators.”
“I’m not exploding.”
“You’ve been tapping your watch against the desk for ten minutes.”
Damian looked down.
His steel watch was in his hand.
He had not noticed taking it off.
He set it down.
“Four hundred seventy thousand dollars left accounts I own.”
“Yes.”
“And no one saw it.”
“Someone saw pieces.”
“Who?”
“Accounting flagged irregularities twice.”
Damian looked at her.
Mara’s expression had changed.
“What happened?”
“Both reviews were closed after supporting documentation was provided by estate operations.”
“Grant.”
“Yes.”
“Who approved closure?”
Mara did not answer immediately.
Damian understood.
“Me.”
“Your office.”
“That means me.”
“It means a delegated approval system signed off.”
“Which I designed.”
“Yes.”
He stood.
Mara closed the laptop.
“Where are you going?”
“To fire someone.”
“Which one?”
“I’ll decide on the walk.”
“Sit down.”
He did not.
She sighed.
“Damian.”
“What?”
“This is the part where your anger makes everything simple.”
Claire’s words, returned through Mara.
He stopped.
Mara saw that they had landed.
“You built a system that trusted documentation more than people,” she said. “That’s a problem. It is not the same problem as Grant abusing his wife.”
“I employed him.”
“Yes.”
“I gave him authority.”
“Yes.”
“I ignored this house because I hated being here.”
“Yes.”
He looked at her.
“You could disagree once.”
“I could, but then we’d both be wrong.”
He sat.
Mara slid the laptop aside.
“You want guilt because guilt feels active. It makes you the center of the problem.”
Damian’s mouth tightened.
“You’re becoming unbearable.”
“I’ve been unbearable since law school.”
He looked at the window.
Outside, Sophie was sitting on the back steps eating cereal from a mug.
Claire stood ten feet away speaking on the phone.
For a moment Damian could not hear anything through the glass.
Sophie swung one white sneaker slowly.
Same dress from the previous night, now wrinkled.
She had refused to change because her suitcase was still in the staff apartment.
Claire had not gone back for it.
Damian watched Sophie eat.
“This is my house,” he said.
Mara followed his gaze.
“Yes.”
“And a child knew more about what happened in it than I did.”
“That should bother you.”
“It does.”
“Good.”
He looked at her.
“That’s all?”
“What do you want, absolution?”
“No.”
“Then be bothered. Fix the systems that are yours to fix. Don’t confuse that with fixing Claire.”
Damian hated useful advice.
By afternoon Claire had changed her plan.
Her sister’s house was not safe enough.
Grant had already called her twice from unknown numbers.
He had not threatened her directly.
He had apologized.
That frightened Claire more.
The first message said he loved her.
The second said Sophie needed stability.
The third mentioned the money.
Claire showed the messages to Officer Alvarez, who had returned with a detective from the department’s domestic violence unit.
The detective, Samira Patel, spoke to Claire for almost three hours.
Damian stayed away.
At Sophie’s request, he sat with her in the breakfast room while she drew on the back of old event menus.
He answered emails.
She drew doors.
After the sixth one, he stopped looking.
“You can ask,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You keep looking.”
“Fair.”
Sophie held up the page.
It showed a square room with a red line across the door.
“That’s the bar.”
Damian nodded.
She drew a smaller figure inside.
“Mommy.”
Then another outside.
Grant.
Then, after a pause, she drew a tall black rectangle beside him.
“What’s that?”
“You.”
“I look terrible.”
“You wear too much black.”
He glanced down at his shirt.
“That’s fair.”
Sophie added a watch.
He looked at it.
“You noticed that?”
“It’s shiny.”
“It’s steel.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you said shiny.”
“Same thing.”
He gave up.
She colored for a while.
Then she asked, “Did Mommy steal money?”
Damian froze.
“Who told you that?”
“Grant.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
“What did he say?”
“That thieves go to jail.”
Damian set his phone down.
“Sophie, your mother told me she took money she shouldn’t have taken.”
The child stared at the paper.
“Is she going to jail?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always say that.”
“People who always know the answer are usually lying.”
She considered him.
“Grant always knows.”
“Yes.”
That seemed to mean something to her.
She put down the red crayon.
“Mommy gave some money to Grandma’s dentist.”
“I heard.”
“Grandma’s tooth was infected.”
“That doesn’t make taking the money okay.”
“I know.”
She frowned.
“But it makes it different.”
Damian looked at the child.
“Yes.”
That was better than most adult ethical analysis he had heard in boardrooms.
Claire entered twenty minutes later.
Her face looked older.
Detective Patel followed.
Sophie ran to her.
Claire hugged her and closed her eyes.
Damian stood.
May you like
Patel introduced herself.
She had the manner of someone who had learned that urgency and speed were not the same thing.
