Chapter 2 - THE FOLDER SHE WOULD NOT GIVE BACK
Victor moved first.
He did not chase Celia.
That surprised me.
Instead, he photographed the SUV’s plate and called someone.
“Why aren’t we stopping her?”
“Because we don’t know what she has.”
“She has something from my trust.”
“Which means we need to know who gave it to her.”
He looked toward Crispen.
My husband had disappeared back inside.
Three minutes later, the security cameras came online again.
Front door.
Hallway.
Kitchen.
Side entrance.
As if someone believed restoring them erased the ten minutes they had been dark.
Victor shook his head.
“Amateur.”
“What?”
“Your system logs everything. Cameras going offline don’t delete the outage.”
My phone showed the timestamps.
9:36 p.m. — internal network disabled.
9:44 p.m. — internal network restored.
Someone inside had intentionally shut down the system.
Victor asked me for permission to access the external backup.
I gave it.
My mother had insisted the security system save a second encrypted copy outside the house.
Crispen never knew.
Within fifteen minutes, Victor found something.
At 9:31, Celia entered through the side door.
She had a key.
At 9:34, Crispen came downstairs.
They argued in the kitchen.
No audio.
Then Celia opened the folder.
Crispen pointed toward the hallway camera.
At 9:36, the feed died.
“She didn’t arrive for sex,” Victor said.
My stomach tightened.
“Maybe she arrived for both.”
“Possible.”
I appreciated that he did not try to make betrayal less painful simply because another crime might exist beside it.
Dorothea arrived at 10:18 wearing wool trousers, a raincoat, and the expression of someone preparing to dismantle another human being through documentation.
She climbed into Victor’s car.
I showed her the trust seal.
Her face changed immediately.
“That folder should not exist outside my office.”
“What does that mean?”
“The Bowman Trust has only three original gold-seal working files.”
“Where are they?”
“One is with me.”
She lifted her leather case.
“One is in secure storage.”
“And the third?”
Dorothea looked toward my house.
“Your mother kept it here.”
My pulse increased.
“Where?”
“In her study.”
The room Crispen had spent two years asking me to renovate into a cigar lounge.
I always refused.
Dorothea continued.
“The file contains property schedules, private loan agreements, and authorization codes.”
“What authorization codes?”
“For Bowman Capital.”
I stared at her.
I had heard the name.
My mother used it for investments.
I never involved myself deeply because June always said:
“Your job is books. Let boring people handle money.”
Dorothea clearly counted herself among those boring people.
“How much is Bowman Capital worth?”
She paused.
“Approximately forty-eight million dollars.”
I went completely still.
Crispen had always believed my mother left me mostly the house and a modest securities account.
So had I.
Dorothea reached into her bag and removed her phone.
“There is another problem.”
She showed me an email received twenty minutes earlier.
A request had been submitted that afternoon to borrow twelve million dollars against Bowman Capital assets.
May you like
The applicant was Whitfield Hospitality Group.
And attached to the request was my electronic signature.
