Chapter 5 - Everyone Had a Reason to Lie.
The mansion kitchen became an improvised command room before one in the morning.
James chose it because it had no private offices, no hidden files, and no reason for anyone to have altered its locks.
Paul sat at the long wooden table with a mug of coffee between his hands.
Emma sat near Mrs. Alvarez.
Walter Finch stood by the pantry door.
Vanessa remained at the far end of the room.
James put the forged authorization and Arthur’s handwritten note on the table.
“No one leaves until I know what happened tonight.”
Vanessa gave him a hard look.
“You cannot detain people in your kitchen.”
“I am not detaining anyone.”
James looked around the room.
“Anyone who wants to leave can leave.”
No one moved.
Vanessa did.
She took two steps toward the door.
Paul spoke without looking at her.
“If you leave now, I will tell him about the midnight deliveries.”
Vanessa stopped.
James turned toward Paul.
“What deliveries?”
Paul rubbed a hand over his face.
“That is the problem.”
He looked ashamed.
“I should have called you weeks ago.”
James’s voice remained level.
“Start at the beginning.”
Paul explained that three weeks earlier, Vanessa had asked him to keep the south service gate open after midnight for a restoration company.
She said valuable antique furniture was being moved out temporarily while the east wing was repaired.
The first truck arrived at 12:20 a.m.
The second arrived two nights later.
The third came the following week.
James looked at Walter.
“Did you authorize restoration work?”
Walter shook his head.
“No, sir.”
“Did anyone move furniture?”
“Not through maintenance.”
James looked back at Paul.
“What was on the trucks?”
“I don’t know.”
“You opened the gate.”
“I did.”
“And you did not inspect them?”
Paul’s jaw tightened.
“Vanessa had a signed instruction from you.”
James slid the forged paper toward him.
“Like this?”
Paul studied it.
His face fell.
“Exactly like this.”
Vanessa interrupted.
“Arthur handled those shipments.”
James turned to her.
“So Arthur was involved.”
“I never said he wasn’t.”
“You said you had no idea why he was here tonight.”
“I said I did not know why he came tonight.”
James gave a cold smile.
“That distinction would impress a lawyer.”
Vanessa looked away.
Emma raised her hand slightly, almost like a student in school.
James noticed.
“Emma?”
“There is something else.”
Vanessa’s eyes snapped toward her.
Emma continued anyway.
“Last week, I was asked to clean the blue guest room after midnight.”
James frowned.
“Why after midnight?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who asked you?”
“Ms. Cole.”
Vanessa crossed her arms.
“Staff clean rooms when they are available.”
Emma looked down.
“There was a man there.”
“What man?”
“The same man from tonight.”
“Arthur?”
Emma nodded.
“He was on the phone.”
James leaned forward.
“What did you hear?”
Emma closed her eyes for a moment, remembering.
“He said the inventory had to match before Friday.”
Paul looked at Walter.
Walter looked at James.
James asked the next question slowly.
“What inventory?”
Emma shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Mrs. Alvarez spoke for the first time.
“I might.”
Everyone turned toward her.
She had worked for the Mercer family longer than anyone else in the room.
She had known James as a teenager.
She stood and went to the old built-in cabinet beside the pantry.
From behind a stack of linen books, she removed a faded leather binder.
James recognized it immediately.
His mother used to call it the house ledger.
It contained handwritten records of paintings, antique furniture, silver, jewelry, and family items that were never included in ordinary property lists.
Mrs. Alvarez placed it in front of him.
“I keep a copy because your mother asked me to.”
James opened it.
Several high-value items were marked with small red dots beside their names.
He looked up.
“What do these mean?”
Mrs. Alvarez’s face was grim.
“They are missing.”
Vanessa laughed in disbelief.
“You cannot be serious.”
Mrs. Alvarez did not look at her.
“The Aubusson tapestry from the east gallery.”
She turned a page.
“The pair of nineteenth-century silver candelabras from the music room.”
Another page.
“Your father’s first-edition collection.”
James’s expression darkened.
“Why didn’t I notice?”
“Because replacements were put in their places.”
Walter muttered something under his breath.
James asked, “Replacements?”
Mrs. Alvarez nodded.
“Very good ones.”
The room became completely still.
James looked at Vanessa.
She looked genuinely surprised.
That bothered him.
Until that moment, he had assumed Vanessa was at the center of everything.
But her reaction to the missing collection did not look performed.
Paul saw it too.
“You didn’t know,” he said.
Vanessa turned on him.
“Of course I knew there were restoration shipments.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
James closed the ledger.
“If Vanessa did not know what was being removed, then Arthur was using her.”
Vanessa’s face hardened.
“Do not make me sound like an idiot.”
James looked directly at her.
“I am trying to decide whether you are an accomplice or a target.”
Vanessa’s eyes flashed.
Then Emma whispered something that changed the room again.
“I think there was a fourth truck.”
Paul frowned.
“There wasn’t.”
Emma shook her head.
“Not through the south gate.”
James turned toward her.
“Where?”
“The old greenhouse road.”
Walter went pale.
“That road has been locked for ten years.”
Emma looked at Vanessa.
“I saw Ms. Cole’s car there yesterday.”
Vanessa’s expression froze.
James opened the house ledger again.
The most valuable item in the entire binder had no red dot beside it.
It was the Mercer family diamond necklace.
James knew exactly where it was supposed to be.
Inside a safe in his late mother’s bedroom.
May you like
He stood.
“We check the safe now.”
