Chapter 2 - What Was Inside
The waiter dragged the handbag from the fire pit and dropped it onto the stone beside the pool.
The bottom was blackened. One gold corner had warped. Smoke rose from the seams.
Sloan tore free from Harrison and dropped to her knees in a dress that had cost more than Eleanor’s first car.
“Don’t touch it,” Harrison said.
Sloan ignored him.
She yanked at the scorched zipper. It stuck halfway. She swore, grabbed a steak knife from a nearby table, and sawed through the fabric lining while fifty guests pretended not to stare.
Eleanor noticed something else.
Sloan’s hands were trembling.
“What envelope?” Eleanor asked.
Sloan froze.
“What?”
“You were saying something about an envelope.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
Harrison crouched beside his wife. “Sloan, what was in the bag?”
“My phone. My wallet. Everything.”
“Then why are you cutting open the lining?”
Her eyes flashed. “Because your mother just threw twenty thousand dollars into a fire.”
“Twenty-three,” someone muttered behind them.
Sloan turned. “Excuse me?”
The speaker was Daniel Reeves, Eleanor’s attorney and oldest friend. He stood near the bar with one hand in his pocket and a look that made Sloan’s face lose color.
Daniel nodded toward the purse. “You told the appraiser at Whitmore Auction House it was worth twenty-three thousand. Last Tuesday.”
Harrison stared at his wife.
“What appraiser?”
Sloan stood too quickly.
“Daniel, this is none of your business.”
“It became my business when the auction house called my office about the Caldwell estate inventory.”
Eleanor felt every conversation around them die.
Sloan’s mouth tightened. “I was getting a valuation.”
“On what?” Eleanor asked.
Sloan looked toward the mansion.
That was enough.
Eleanor turned to her house manager. “Mara, lock the upstairs study.”
Sloan stepped forward. “You can’t do that.”
“It’s my house.”
Harrison looked between them. “Why would she need to lock the study?”
Eleanor held Sloan’s gaze.
“Because your wife wasn’t appraising her handbag.”
Daniel pulled a folded printout from his jacket.
“She was appraising your father’s collection.”
Harrison went still.
Thomas Caldwell’s watches, letters, medals, and personal effects had been sealed in the upstairs study since his death.
May you like
Eleanor looked at Sloan’s scorched bag.
“Now,” she said quietly, “tell me why an auction house has photographs of things no one had permission to touch.”
