Chapter 2 - Malcolm’s Safe
Naomi Reese locked the salon doors.
It was not a dramatic gesture. It was procedure.
No one left until Leonard understood why a watch connected to his missing daughter had appeared in Chloe’s possession.
Chloe noticed the lock.
“You can’t detain me.”
“No one is detaining you,” Naomi said calmly. “You’re free to leave.”
Chloe took one step toward the doors.
“But,” Naomi added, “I’ll preserve the surveillance recording showing you destroyed company property currently suspected of containing evidence relevant to a twenty-six-year disappearance.”
Chloe stopped.
Arthur almost admired Naomi’s precision.
Leonard sat at the consultation table.
“Tell me where you got the watch.”
Chloe remained standing.
“It belonged to my father.”
Leonard’s eyes narrowed.
Arthur felt cold.
Malcolm Vale had been Leonard’s younger brother and Vale Timepieces’ longtime vice chairman. He had died of pancreatic cancer thirteen years earlier.
“Malcolm had Eleanor’s watch?” Leonard asked.
“I found it after he died.”
“Where?”
“In his safe.”
Leonard looked down.
Arthur saw the thought hit him.
Malcolm had spent years comforting him after Eleanor disappeared.
Malcolm had been the person who brought Leonard the financial records supposedly proving that Eleanor had stolen from the company.
And Malcolm had possessed her missing watch.
“For thirteen years?” Leonard asked. “You had it for thirteen years and never showed me?”
“I didn’t know what it was.”
Arthur spoke.
“You knew enough to bring it here instead of a normal jeweler.”
“It’s a Vale.”
“You also asked me not to log the serial number.”
Leonard’s head snapped toward her.
Chloe glared at Arthur.
“That isn’t unusual for private clients.”
“It is company policy.”
Chloe turned to Leonard.
“Uncle Leonard, Arthur is clearly confused. He’s emotional.”
Arthur stood.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make my age the problem because you don’t like what I remember.”
Chloe’s jaw tightened.
Arthur pointed to the photograph.
“That’s Eleanor’s handwriting.”
Leonard nodded.
He had recognized it immediately.
Arthur continued.
“And the watch was in my possession between approximately twelve-fifteen and two-forty in the morning on October seventeenth, 2000.”
“How can you be that precise?” Naomi asked.
“Because I was restoring a Marine Chronometer Number Eight. I recorded every bench entry by time. Paper logs. We didn’t digitize them until later.”
“Do those logs still exist?”
Arthur hesitated.
“My private notebooks might.”
Chloe laughed.
“Might.”
Arthur ignored her.
Leonard touched the tiny photograph.
“What did Eleanor say to you?”
Arthur could see her again.
Twenty-four years old.
Wet from October rain.
Terrified.
“She said your brother had accused her of moving fourteen million dollars through supplier accounts.”
“Fourteen point eight,” Leonard whispered.
Arthur stared.
“You remember.”
“I remember every number.”
Leonard’s voice had changed.
He had spent twenty-six years trying to forget and apparently failed.
“She said she found the transfers,” Arthur continued. “She didn’t make them.”
Leonard looked at him.
“Then why did she run?”
“Because she believed nobody would believe her.”
“I would have.”
Arthur said nothing.
Leonard understood the silence.
His face hardened.
“What?”
“She thought you had already chosen Malcolm.”
“That’s not true.”
“She heard you arguing with her mother. She heard you say, ‘If Eleanor did this, she is no daughter of mine.’”
Leonard stood abruptly.
“I said if.”
“To a frightened twenty-four-year-old, there may not have been much difference.”
Leonard turned away.
Arthur regretted the cruelty but not the truth.
Naomi examined the photograph.
“What’s 7B-14?”
Arthur shook his head.
Leonard did too.
Then Leonard looked at the line below it.
Mother knew.
“My wife.”
Margaret Vale had died fourteen years earlier after a stroke.
Chloe spoke quickly.
“My aunt was ill for years. Eleanor could have meant anything.”
Leonard turned.
“Margaret wasn’t ill in 2000.”
Chloe said nothing.
Naomi photographed the watch, engraving, mechanism, and photograph before placing each item into separate evidence sleeves from her security kit.
“What are you doing?” Chloe demanded.
“Preserving condition.”
“It belongs to me.”
“Ownership is now disputed.”
“I found it in my father’s safe.”
“And Mr. Bennett says it was stolen from him.”
Arthur watched Chloe’s hands.
Her left thumb kept rubbing against the edge of her index finger.
Malcolm had done the same thing when he lied.
Arthur had forgotten that.
Leonard approached Chloe.
“When you found the watch, what else was in the safe?”
“Business papers.”
“What papers?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Thirteen years ago you opened your dead father’s safe and found an object connected to the cousin who vanished when you were eighteen. You expect me to believe you forgot everything around it?”
Chloe’s composure cracked.
“I was grieving.”
“So was I.”
That silenced her.
Naomi’s phone buzzed.
She had quietly sent the serial number to company archives.
She read the reply.
“Mr. Vale.”
Leonard turned.
“The original heritage registry lists LV-17-EP as a one-off prototype commissioned in 1998.”
“I know.”
Naomi continued.
“Recipient: Eleanor Margaret Vale.”
Chloe looked at the doors again.
Naomi scrolled.
“There’s another entry.”
“What?”
“A service-status amendment entered October nineteenth, 2000. Two days after Eleanor disappeared.”
Arthur moved closer.
“By whom?”
Naomi looked at Leonard.
“The physical watch was marked ‘recovered and privately retained by executive authority.’”
Leonard’s face darkened.
“Which executive?”
Naomi turned the phone toward him.
The authorization code consisted of three initials.
MAV.
Malcolm Alexander Vale.
Arthur stared at the screen.
Malcolm had not merely possessed the watch years later.
He had recorded possession of it two days after it was stolen.
Chloe whispered, “That doesn’t prove anything.”
Arthur looked at her.
“No.”
Then he remembered the envelope Malcolm had forced into his hands after the attack.
A check.
A threat.
A number printed across the top.
Northstar Components LLC.
Arthur’s stomach tightened.
May you like
Because fourteen point eight million dollars was not the only number he remembered from October 2000.
And if his old bank records still existed, Malcolm’s first mistake might have survived with them.
