Chương 6
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“I’ve met your relatives.”
“Fair.”
“I’m calling someone.”
“Who?”
“A lawyer who likes rich-family messes less than I do.”
“High bar.”
“Victoria.”
“I know.”
“You do not go home tonight.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good. And if Richard contacts you, preserve it.”
“He already did.”
“Preserve everything.”
After the call, Olivia made coffee.
Victoria took one sip and made a face.
“This is terrible.”
“It’s three fifteen.”
“That doesn’t improve it.”
“It wasn’t meant to.”
They sat at the kitchen table under a light that was too bright.
At four, Victoria fell asleep on the sofa with Olivia’s gray sweatshirt folded beneath her head.
At six thirty, she woke to the sound of a garbage truck and had a moment of complete peace because she did not know where she was.
Then she remembered.
Olivia was standing in the kitchen in fresh clothes, staring at her phone.
“What?”
Olivia turned the screen.
An email from the Hayes Family Foundation had gone to the board at 6:12 a.m.
Subject: TEMPORARY ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE.
Olivia Bennett had been placed on leave pending review of “irregularities in historical acquisition approvals.”
Victoria sat up.
“He fired you.”
“Not technically.”
“He blamed you.”
“Not technically.”
“Stop saying technically.”
Olivia put the phone down.
“My access is gone.”
“What?”
“Email. Document system. Foundation drive.”
“You can’t get records?”
“No.”
“Did you save anything?”
“I saved my personal employment documents. I did not download foundation records in the middle of the night because that could look like theft.”
Victoria rubbed her face.
“He’s moving faster than we are.”
“He always does.”
There was no admiration in Olivia’s voice.
That was when Victoria understood why Richard had been afraid of the message on his phone.
Not because one message proved a crime.
Because it revealed timing.
He had known Olivia’s review was coming.
He had planned to remove the originals.
The collapsed glass was not the beginning of his response.
It was the moment she had interrupted it.
By nine, Claire arrived with another attorney named Nathan Cole, a compact man in his early fifties who wore no tie and carried a paper notebook.
He did not touch the documents for nearly twenty minutes.
Instead he asked questions.
Who found them?
Where exactly?
Who touched them?
Who saw them?
Was the gallery locked?
Who owned the painting?
Who controlled the estate?
Who had taken photographs?
No one.
Victoria cursed.
Nathan looked at her.
“You didn’t photograph the message?”
“No.”
“You saw it clearly?”
“Yes.”
“Olivia?”
“Part of it.”
“What part?”
“My name and the line about the originals.”
“Good.”
Victoria said, “Good?”
“Two witnesses are better than one.”
“Richard deleted it by now.”
“Possibly.”
“Then what?”
“Then it may still exist somewhere. Or not. We don’t build a case around evidence we don’t have.”
Victoria disliked him immediately.
That also helped.
He did not sound impressed by the Hayes name.
He sounded annoyed by incomplete documentation.
Nathan examined the papers with gloves.
He photographed each page, front and back, beside a ruler and identification card. He wrote down the order. He placed them in archival sleeves Olivia had from work.
“What do we do now?” Victoria asked.
“We verify before accusing anyone of anything.”
“Richard almost injured me.”
“Separate issue.”
“He altered the trust.”
“We don’t know that yet.”
“He used Olivia’s signature.”
“We don’t know that yet.”
Olivia nodded.
Victoria glared at both of them.
Nathan closed his notebook.
“This is the part where people ruin their own case because they are emotionally certain before they are factually prepared.”
“I am factually prepared to say a glass wall nearly hit me.”
“Yes.”
“And Richard pulled it.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you acting like I imagined the entire thing?”
“I’m not.”
“You sound like him.”
Nathan’s expression did not change.
“Then you’ve had too many people in your life who answer anger with calm voices.”
Victoria stopped.
Claire looked down to hide what might have been a smile.
Nathan continued.
“I believe you found these where you say you found them. I believe the documents raise serious questions. I also believe Richard Hayes has spent decades building systems around himself. If you move too quickly, he will use every error you make to change the subject from what he did to whether you are credible.”
Victoria thought of Richard’s text.
Protect the family from you.
“What do you need?”
“Original records from independent sources.”
“The law firm?”
“Possibly.”
“The bank?”
“Possibly.”
“Dad’s doctors?”
“Only if capacity becomes relevant, and carefully.”
“What about the company?”
“Eventually.”
“How long?”
Nathan looked at her.
“As long as facts take.”
She hated that answer more than all the others.
Richard’s first public move came before noon.
A gossip website posted that Victoria Hayes had suffered “an emotional incident” after the foundation dinner and damaged a valuable installation in the family gallery.
No source was named.
The article mentioned her grief after Daniel’s death.
It mentioned her divorce.
It mentioned that she had “retreated from public life for a period of recovery.”
It did not say from what.
It did not need to.
By lunchtime, two reporters had texted her.
By one, a photograph of the broken gallery barrier was circulating online.
The angle showed the glass.
It showed no people.
Caption: SOURCES SAY A FAMILY DISPUTE MAY HAVE PRECEDED THE DAMAGE.
Victoria sat at Olivia’s kitchen table and stared at it.
“He did this.”
Claire said, “Probably.”
“Probably?”
“We are not going to start making unsupported claims because he may be making unsupported claims.”
“He’s telling people I’m unstable.”
Nathan looked up from his notebook.
“Is the article false?”
Victoria turned on him.
“What?”
“Did you have an emotional incident?”
“I almost got hit by a glass panel.”
“I would call that emotional.”
“You know what they mean.”
“Yes.”
“Then why—”
“Because we need to separate insult from evidence.”
Victoria stood so fast the chair scraped.
“I’m done with you.”
“Okay.”
She stared at him.
May you like
“That’s it?”
“You can fire me.”
