Chapter 8 - The Day After He Died

Miles gripped the photograph until the corners curled. "I didn't see this taken."

"The date says Thursday. He died Wednesday."

"Look at the flowers," Miles said. "They're the white lilies from the foundation breakfast. That breakfast was Wednesday morning. Someone changed the timestamp."

I wanted to hate how quickly he noticed. I needed him to be right.

Kim arrived in a charcoal jacket with two uniformed officers. We showed her the photograph and the ledgers. She read my father's note twice.

"This doesn't prove homicide," she said. "It does prove we should look at the original medical and access records."

She bagged the evidence and gave me a receipt. For once, surrendering paper felt like progress.

At the hospital, Inez sat upright with a cup of tea. A purple bruise marked her cheek, but her voice was steady.

"Your dad took a fall," she said. "That much is true. What they lied about was when."

She explained that she had heard him arguing with Voss around ten that night. At ten twenty, she found him conscious but bleeding beside the suite doorway. He begged her to call an ambulance. Pike seized her phone.

"They wouldn't let me help him," she whispered. "They said the board was coming, and they had to decide what story to tell."

"He was alive?"

"He asked for you. I heard him say your name."

The room blurred. For years I had imagined his final seconds: sudden, painless, beyond anyone's power to change. Now I saw him alone, waiting for help that powerful men had withheld.

Miles put his hand on the chair beside mine, not touching me without permission.

"Inez," he asked, "who was at the board meeting?"

"Voss. Pike. A lawyer named Harold Fenwick. And the woman from payroll."

"Evelyn Price," I said.

Inez nodded. "She tried to stop them. Pike hit her, then they took her away."

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My phone lit up with a news alert claiming I'd suffered a breakdown and attacked hotel employees during the gala. At the bottom was a statement from Voss expressing concern for my health.

A second alert followed: an emergency board hearing would determine whether I was fit to vote my shares.