Chapter 4 - The Voice on the Recording / The Man Who Knew
The voice was older, rough with panic, but Claire knew it.
She had heard it in home videos. In birthday messages. In the last voicemail her father left before he died.
“Dad,” she whispered.
On the tablet, a grainy security image showed the back entrance of the Whitmore studio. A man in a dark coat stood beside a woman holding a folder. The image jumped. Smoke crawled along the ceiling. The man turned toward the camera.
It was Robert Whitmore.
Claire's father had always said the fire started after he left. He had told her the firefighters arrived too late to save Evelyn's work. He had never mentioned a second person inside.
The recording crackled.
“Margaret, the girl is still inside.”
A woman's voice answered. “Get the papers. Leave her.”
The guests erupted in whispers.
Margaret stood motionless, one hand at her throat. “This is edited.”
Ruiz paused the video. “We'll have specialists authenticate it.”
“It's a fake,” Margaret said. “Lena has hated this family for years.”
Lena's face tightened. “My mother went into that building to save the original sketches. She never came out.”
Claire looked at her. “You told me your mother died of cancer.”
“I was fifteen. Your father paid for the funeral and told everyone not to ask questions. I believed him until I found her letters.”
“You were my friend,” Claire said.
“I was.”
“You sat at my kitchen table. You watched me cry over my mother.”
“I wanted to tell you. I was scared.”
“And now?”
“Now I'm done being scared.”
Daniel stepped forward. “Claire, the recording doesn't prove my mother started the fire.”
“No,” Lena said. “The ledger does.”
Ruiz turned toward Margaret. “Do you know where it is?”
Margaret's silence answered first.
Then she looked directly at Daniel. “Tell them what your father did.”
Daniel went white.
Claire stared at him. “What does your father have to do with any of this?”
He looked at the floor.
Margaret's voice shook. “Your father didn't die in an accident, Daniel. He was the one who set the fire.”
Daniel looked as if someone had struck him.
“My father died when I was seventeen,” he said. “I was told he was driving home from a business dinner.”
“He was driving away from the studio,” Lena replied.
Margaret's eyes flashed. “Stop.”
“No. You made me live with it. You made my mother live with it. You made Claire grow up believing her mother died because of a faulty wire.”
Claire couldn't feel her hands. “Daniel. Did you know?”
“I found a report last year.”
“And you didn't tell me?”
“I didn't know if it was real.”
“You had a year.”
“I was trying to find the ledger.”
“While planning this wedding?”
“I thought if I could get it first, I could protect you.”
Claire stared at him. “Protect me from the truth?”
He had no answer.
Ruiz asked the guests to remain where they were while another officer checked the building. The ballroom's giant screen had gone black. Without the slideshow, the altar looked suddenly bare and strange.
Lena took a breath. “The ledger lists payments made to the fire inspector, the night guard, and the family of the woman who died. My mother was never supposed to be there. She went back because she realized the original sketches were missing.”
“Where is it?” Ruiz asked.
“Not with me.”
Margaret gave a thin smile. “Then you have nothing.”
Lena looked at Claire. “Your father hid it where your mother used to work. In the old house.”
Claire's stomach tightened. The Whitmore estate had been sold after her father's death. The sewing room had been stripped, renovated, and turned into a wine cellar.
“It's gone,” she said.
“Not all of it,” Lena replied. “There's a service wall behind the old cutting table. Your mother showed me when we were kids.”
Claire remembered a narrow door behind a rack of fabric. She remembered being told never to open it.
Ruiz closed the evidence case. “We're going to the estate.”
Margaret moved toward the exit.
An officer blocked her path.
“Mrs. Mercer, you'll need to come with us.”
Margaret's chin lifted. “You have no idea who you're dealing with.”
Lena looked at her without blinking. “We finally do.”
Then Daniel leaned toward Claire and whispered, “There's something else in that ledger. Something about you.”
May you like
Ruiz asked Claire whether she needed medical attention. Claire shook her head. Her body felt strangely distant, as if the shock had moved her outside herself. She could hear the detective speaking, but the words came slowly. The one thing she understood was that her mother's death had been discussed, bargained over, and hidden by people who had attended Claire's birthdays and sent flowers on anniversaries.
THE DRESS FULL OF SECRETS |
