Part 2
“Adrian, you do understand how this appears.”
“I understand what you said.”
“You heard me.”
“I also saw you strike an employee.”
The strings from the speakers shifted into a lower phrase. Somewhere inside the climate-controlled walls, the ventilation system exhaled.
Celeste looked past him toward Mara. “Ask her to explain the bag.”
Mara followed her gaze to the canvas tote.
It sat upright beside the podium, beige fabric slightly creased, black handles folded against each other. The brass zipper was closed. She had carried it every day for nine months. It contained the ordinary tools of a job that looked elegant from a distance and was mostly solved with tape, pencils, cotton gloves, chargers, spare clips, and the willingness to kneel on marble floors in expensive clothes.
She had left it beside the podium while adjusting the gallery lighting.
Anyone in the room could have reached it.
The thought came fast, followed by shame because it sounded like something a guilty person might think.
Helen took a slow breath. The emerald velvet at her shoulders shifted.
“Mara,” she said.
Her voice was not accusing. Not yet. That was harder to endure.
Mara looked at her.
Helen’s gray bob framed a face that had been open and courteous all evening. She had asked Mara’s opinion on the placement of the final painting, then actually waited for the answer. When Mara said the work looked stronger against the west wall, Helen had studied it there and nodded. The exchange had lasted less than a minute, but Mara had remembered it because wealthy guests often asked questions as a form of decoration. Helen had seemed to want the truth.
Now she appeared to want it again.
“Do you know where the watch is?”
Mara swallowed.
“I never touched it.”
Her voice came out as a whisper.
She hated that. She wanted to repeat the sentence with enough force to make it convincing, but her throat had narrowed. Her eyes were wet. The room’s soft edges sharpened and blurred in alternating waves.
“I never touched it,” she said again, only slightly louder.
Celeste made a small sound through her nose.
Adrian turned toward her. “Enough.”
“This is not complicated.”
“It became complicated when you hit her.”
Celeste’s expression did not change, but a faint tension appeared at the corners of her mouth. “I reacted to being robbed.”
“You reacted before anyone searched anything.”
“I know what happened.”
“No,” Adrian said. “You know the watch is missing.”
The distinction remained between them.
Mara took one small step away from Celeste. Her shoe whispered against the marble. She lowered her hand from her cheek because she did not want to look helpless, then raised it again because the skin still throbbed.
She focused on breathing.
In for four. Hold for two. Out for six.
It was a habit she had developed during difficult events. No one had taught it to her. She had discovered one night, locked in a supply room after an auction alarm malfunctioned, that counting could make panic occupy less space. The numbers did not solve anything. They merely gave fear something to stand behind.
Adrian looked down at the tote.
“Is that yours?”
“Yes.”
“Has it been with you all evening?”
“Mostly.”
Celeste seized the word. “Mostly.”
Mara glanced at her. “I left it here while I checked the lights.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. A few minutes.”
Celeste looked at Helen.
There it was—the smallest shift of alliance. Not a declaration, only an invitation: You see.
Helen’s fingers left her necklace. She folded her hands at her waist, then unfolded them.
“Where were the rest of us?” Adrian asked Mara.
She tried to reconstruct the room.
The private viewing had been stripped down to five people by design. Helen had requested discretion around the watch and the final lot. Celeste had requested discretion around everything else. Adrian had agreed to keep the room closed. Owen had been calibrating the security monitor at the far wall. Helen had stood near the blue painting. Celeste had moved between the champagne console and the podium, never quite participating in any task, yet somehow requiring everyone else to account for her position.
Mara remembered turning a spotlight dial near the west wall.
She remembered Adrian asking whether the catalogues had been counted.
She remembered Celeste saying the light made the silver in the painting look dull.
She remembered crossing back to correct it.
But memory under pressure did not arrive in order. It came as loose objects rolling across a floor.
“I was at the lighting panel,” Mara said. “Mr. Price was by the monitor. Ms. Marlowe was near the final lot. You were at the podium.”
“And Celeste?”
Mara looked at her.
Celeste’s face was composed.
“Near the champagne,” Mara said.
Celeste smiled without warmth. “So you were watching me.”
“No.”
“You just described where I was.”
“You asked where everyone was.”
“I didn’t ask anything.”
Adrian turned his head. “I did.”
Celeste’s eyes remained on Mara.
Mara felt the room narrow to the space between them. She had spent the evening avoiding direct conflict because Celeste seemed to treat resistance as proof of disrespect. At seven fifteen, she had asked Mara to move Helen’s catalogue behind her own. At seven twenty, she had asked Mara to replace the champagne because the glasses were too warm. At seven thirty, she had said the podium was too close to the painting. None of those demands mattered enough to refuse.
Then she had asked Mara to change the bidding order.
That had mattered.
The request had been delivered softly, almost carelessly. Celeste wanted the final blue painting introduced before Helen’s remarks rather than after them. Mara had explained that the approved sequence placed Helen first because the provenance statement mattered to the lot. Celeste had replied that provenance mattered less than momentum.
May you like
Mara had said she would need Adrian’s approval.
Celeste had looked at her for one measured second and said, “Of course you would.”
