Chapter 9 - THE BLUE ROOM
Cedric did not answer Alonzo immediately.
He stared at Lenora's recorder as if the device had opened a door he had spent twelve years holding shut.
"Dad."
Alonzo's voice was softer this time.
"What happened in the blue room on October ninth?"
Cedric lowered his head.
"I signed something."
Flora felt Alonzo's hand go rigid around hers.
"What?"
"Transfer authorizations."
"For the foundation?"
Cedric nodded.
"And for two family trusts."
Detective Warren stepped closer.
"How many documents?"
"I do not remember."
"Try."
Cedric closed his eyes.
"Eight or nine."
Alonzo looked stunned.
"You signed eight or nine transfer documents you did not understand?"
Cedric flinched.
"I understood what I thought they were."
"Which was?"
"Temporary restructuring."
"Who told you that?"
Cedric looked toward the greenhouse doors.
"Gideon."
Flora did not need Portia to be present to know the rest.
"And Portia was there."
Cedric nodded again.
Alonzo stepped away from him.
"My mother caught you."
Cedric's face tightened.
"Yes."
"That is the betrayal."
"Part of it."
Alonzo turned back.
"There is more?"
Cedric looked at Warren, then at Flora, then finally at his son.
"Lenora ordered me to call the board and freeze everything before midnight."
"Did you?"
"No."
Alonzo stared at him.
Cedric's voice cracked.
"Portia told me that if the transfers were challenged publicly, the foundation's lenders would panic, the press would discover your mother's condition, and every partner we had would assume the company was collapsing."
"So you chose the company."
"I chose time."
"You chose silence."
Cedric did not deny it.
Flora looked at the recorder.
Lenora's phrase made brutal sense now.
Frightened men could be persuaded to call cowardice protection.
Cedric had spent twelve years doing exactly that.
Warren asked the next question.
"Where is the blue room?"
Cedric looked toward the mansion.
"Second floor."
"Does it still exist?"
"Yes."
"Then we search it."
They returned to the house just before three in the morning.
Portia was still in the library.
Gideon was beside her.
Mara was gone from the pantry but had been stopped from leaving and placed in a guest room under police supervision.
Evelyn remained missing.
Portia took one look at Cedric's face and understood that the recorder had worked.
"What did Lenora accuse me of this time?"
Cedric kept walking.
"Enough."
Gideon stood.
"Cedric, anything found in an old recording should be handled carefully."
Cedric stopped.
"You were named."
Gideon's expression did not move.
"I assumed I might be."
Alonzo stared at him.
"That does not surprise you?"
"Lenora distrusted me near the end."
Cedric laughed bitterly.
"You told me she was confused."
"She was heavily medicated."
Flora stepped closer.
"She sounded clearer than anyone in this room."
Gideon's eyes hardened.
"You knew her for how long?"
"I did not need to know her to hear a complete sentence."
Portia rose.
"Where are you going?"
Cedric looked at her.
"The blue room."
Portia's face changed for less than a second.
It was enough.
Warren noticed.
"You know it?"
Portia recovered.
"Of course I know it."
"What happened there on October ninth?"
"Which year?"
Cedric answered.
"The year Lenora caught us."
Portia stared at him.
Gideon stood very still.
Cedric continued.
"You remember now."
Portia sat back down.
"I remember Lenora screaming at everyone because she was sick and terrified."
Cedric looked exhausted.
"That is the story you trained me to repeat."
Warren left two officers with Portia and Gideon.
The blue room occupied the northeast corner of the second floor.
Its walls were covered in faded blue silk.
A small piano stood beneath tall windows.
A china cabinet filled with Lenora's porcelain collection covered one wall.
Nothing had been changed since her death except the dusting.
Cedric stopped at the doorway.
"I have not been in here in years."
Alonzo looked at him.
"Why?"
"Because the last time I stood in this room, your mother told me she no longer knew whether she could trust me."
Alonzo's anger softened for only a moment.
"Could she?"
Cedric stared at the floor.
"Not then."
Warren directed the search carefully.
They examined the desk.
The piano bench.
The fireplace.
The china cabinet.
Nothing obvious appeared.
Flora stood in front of a shelf of blue-and-white porcelain.
There were more than twenty pieces.
Bowls.
Plates.
Small jars.
A pair of narrow vases.
The shattered ballroom vase had not been unique in color.
It had been unique in placement.
Flora remembered Lenora's line.
The blue-and-white vase is not an heirloom because of its value.
It is an heirloom because it is where I hid the first proof.
First proof.
That implied there were others.
"Cedric."
He came over.
"Did Lenora collect all of these?"
"Yes."
"Did Portia ever try to remove these too?"
Cedric frowned.
"Not that I know of."
Flora looked at the cabinet.
"Maybe she did not know which piece mattered."
Alonzo joined her.
"The first proof was under the ballroom vase."
Flora pointed at the collection.
"Maybe the rest is here."
Warren ordered the crime scene technician to examine the cabinet before anyone touched the contents.
The back panel showed no obvious alteration.
The shelves were ordinary.
Then Flora noticed a small white saucer placed upside down behind a larger bowl.
It did not match the arrangement.
Every other piece faced outward.
The technician lifted it with gloves.
On the bottom was a handwritten date in blue ink.
OCTOBER 9.
Cedric stopped breathing.
Alonzo looked at him.
"Mom wrote that?"
"Yes."
The saucer had a felt pad glued over the maker's mark.
The technician peeled it back carefully.
A narrow brass tab had been hidden beneath it.
The tab released a false panel behind the china cabinet.
A shallow compartment opened.
There was no ledger inside.
Portia had gotten there first.
Dust outlined the shape of a thick book that had once rested on the shelf.
Cedric swore softly.
Warren photographed the empty space.
Flora felt frustration burn through her.
Again they had arrived after the evidence.
Again someone seemed to know where they would look.
Then Alonzo pointed to the back of the compartment.
"There is something else."
A photograph had slipped vertically into a crack between two boards.
The technician removed it with tweezers.
It was an old instant photograph faded at the edges.
Three women stood in the greenhouse on a summer afternoon.
Flora recognized Lenora from family portraits.
She recognized Portia, younger but unmistakable.
The third woman made Flora's knees weaken.
"No."
Alonzo turned toward her.
"What?"
Flora took a step back.
"That is my mother."
Claire Hart stood beside Lenora Vale with one hand resting on a planting table.
Flora had never seen the photograph.
She had never heard her mother mention the Vale family.
Cedric stared at the image.
"Claire."
Flora looked at him sharply.
"You knew her too?"
Cedric's face became another locked door.
"A long time ago."
"How long?"
"Before you met Alonzo."
"That is not an answer."
The technician turned the photograph over.
There was handwriting on the back.
Lenora's handwriting.
Flora read the first line aloud.
"Claire, if anything happens to Daniel, keep your daughter far from Portia."
Her voice failed.
Alonzo took the photograph.
The second line was worse.
"If Portia ever learns Flora's name, she will know exactly what Claire kept for me."
Flora stared at Cedric.
"What did my mother keep?"
Cedric looked terrified.
"I don't know."
Flora stepped toward him.
"You knew her name before I ever walked into your house."
"Yes."
"And you never told me."
Cedric could not meet her eyes.
A movement came from the doorway.
Portia stood there between two officers.
She had apparently demanded to use the restroom and convinced them to pass the blue room on the way.
Her gaze fixed on the photograph.
Every trace of color left her face.
Then she looked directly at Flora.
"So Claire never told you."
Flora's heart pounded.
"Told me what?"
Portia smiled slowly.
"Why she spent the last years of her life hiding from us."
The walk back from the greenhouse felt longer than the walk out.
Cedric moved slowly.
Alonzo stayed several steps ahead of him.
Neither spoke.
Flora understood that the recording had done more than expose Portia and Gideon.
It had stripped away the version of Cedric that Alonzo had been protecting in his own mind.
A weak father was painful.
A frightened father who repeatedly chose silence was harder.
Flora wanted to tell Alonzo he did not have to decide that relationship tonight.
She did not.
Too many people in this family had already decided what others should feel and when they should feel it.
May you like
She simply walked beside him.
