Chương 2
“I can answer questions about our staff,” Ethan corrected. “The hotel hires the banquet team.”
His voice was measured, but the distinction mattered to him. Claire filed that away.
The server swallowed. “I just got told to clear the white cup first.”
“By whom?” Ethan asked.
“A woman on the service channel.”
“Name?”
“She didn’t give one.”
Ethan reached toward the radio clipped beneath the server’s jacket. Claire stopped him with a slight movement of her elbow.
“Don’t touch it yet.”
His eyes narrowed.
Claire examined the cup. Plain white porcelain, thin gold line around the rim. No monogram. No hotel crest. A faint crescent of tea stained the inside, below the untouched surface. The silver pot beside it remained warm when she placed the back of two fingers near the lid.
“Mr. Reed,” she said, “was this yours?”
He glanced at the service.
“I hadn’t touched it.”
“Do you normally drink tea at these events?”
“Yes.”
“Always?”
“When everyone else is drinking champagne.”
Ethan looked toward the ballroom doors. “I’m calling the police.”
“They’re already coming,” Claire said. “Someone in this room has called them six times by now.”
“What do you think is in the cup?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer appeared to disappoint Reed.
Claire met his eyes. “Anyone who tells you more before a lab looks at it is guessing.”
The smile disappeared. The respect did not.
The young server shifted the tray in his hand. Glasses clicked softly against one another.
Claire asked him his name.
“Luis.”
“Luis, put the tray down on the table. Slowly. Then keep your hands where everyone can see them.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“That’s what people say right before they act like you did.”
His face had tightened with a fear Claire recognized. Not guilt. Consequence. He had rent, a supervisor who would disappear, and an employer who would protect the hotel before it protected him.
“You were given an instruction,” Claire said. “We need to know who gave it. That makes you a witness.”
His shoulders lowered a fraction.
Ethan used his phone to contact the hotel’s director of security. He spoke quietly, his words clipped and specific. Lock the service radios. Preserve access logs. No one leaves through the kitchen without being identified. Separate the banquet captain from the staff. Do not search anyone’s belongings until the police arrive.
Claire listened while still holding the cup.
He knew procedure. He also knew enough to state every step within Reed’s hearing.
Nolan shouted from the corridor.
“You think she saved you?”
The officers tried to move him faster.
Nolan twisted his head back toward the ballroom. His face had lost its drunken softness.
“You think that’s what happened?”
The doors closed on him.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then a woman near the dais began to cry because her dress was wet and because crying was easier than deciding whether she had nearly witnessed a murder.
Reed looked at Claire.
“Come with me.”
“I’m holding potential evidence.”
“Bring it.”
“I’m not carrying it through a hotel.”
Ethan’s mouth tightened, almost satisfied.
Claire looked at Luis. “Is there a clean bus tub nearby?”
He nodded.
“Bring it. Don’t touch the cup.”
A police detective would later tell Claire that her instructions had been imperfect. The cup should have remained exactly where it was. The area should have been isolated. Too many people had already stood near the table, and half the ballroom had been drinking from identical porcelain.
Claire knew all of that.
She also knew the banquet staff would begin clearing the room the moment Reed’s guests were moved, because workers obeyed supervisors long after wealthy people assumed time had stopped.
She placed the cup and saucer inside the plastic tub without touching either surface again. Luis stood beside it until the hotel security director arrived with two police officers and an expression of professional misery.
By then, video of Claire throwing Nolan Voss into the gold chair had been posted from seven angles.
In the clearest clip, Nolan’s hand disappeared around her throat at the exact moment he delivered his insult. Her answer followed four seconds later.
No one online knew who she was.
That did not slow them down.
Reed led Claire through a paneled door behind the ballroom dais into a private dining room decorated in a quieter version of the same wealth. The table had been set for twelve and abandoned. Half-melted butter rested in silver dishes. A basket of rolls sat beneath a linen cloth.
Ethan entered last and closed the door.
Claire remained standing.
Reed loosened neither his tie nor his expression. “Nolan Voss is a director of Reed Maritime Systems.”
“Not after tonight, I assume.”
“That depends on six other directors and several lawyers.”
“He assaulted a candidate for a job in front of a ballroom full of witnesses.”
“That will concern the lawyers. The directors will concern themselves with what removing him costs.”
Claire looked at Ethan. “Did you know he was drunk?”
“I knew he had been drinking.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Ethan hesitated. “Yes.”
“Why wasn’t he removed?”
“He’s the board vice chairman’s brother.”
“So everyone decided gravity worked differently around him.”
Ethan’s cheeks colored, but his tone remained even. “The hotel had been told not to embarrass members of the board.”
“By you?”
“No.”
“By Mr. Reed?”
Reed answered. “By someone who believed they were protecting the event.”
“Who?”
“That is one of the things I intended to hire you to determine.”
Claire looked toward the closed door. Through it came the distant rise and fall of guests being directed out of the ballroom. Someone had resumed playing music, a piano now, too softly to be useful.
“You scheduled a job interview during your foundation gala.”
“I scheduled it after the speeches, when the crowd would thin.”
“It didn’t.”
“You arrived early.”
“Seven minutes.”
“You were in the room for forty-three.”
May you like
Claire’s eyes returned to him.
He knew exactly when she had entered.
