Chapter 8 - The Woman Wearing Anne's Necklace
Claire stared at the security image until the pixels lost meaning.
The woman in the navy dress could have been anyone.
The necklace could have been a copy.
The timing could have been engineered.
Her mind offered every rational explanation it could find.
None survived the expression on Dominic's face.
He recognized the pendant too.
"Where is the original footage?" he asked.
Detective Miles closed his laptop halfway.
"Evidence."
"I need a still of her face."
"So do we."
Claire finally spoke.
"There isn't one."
Miles looked at her.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because whoever did this knew where the cameras were."
Claire pointed at the image.
"Dispatch camera four catches every person from the front if they enter through the main door."
Miles reopened the laptop.
"She used the records corridor."
"Exactly."
"Who knows that route?"
"Employees."
Claire paused.
"Former employees."
Dominic added, "And anyone who had help inside."
Charles stood.
"This is becoming ridiculous."
Everyone looked at him.
He spread his hands.
"A woman wears a necklace, and suddenly we're pretending Anne came back from the dead."
Claire watched him carefully.
"No one said that."
"You were thinking it."
"Were you?"
Charles's mouth tightened.
The detective wrote something down.
Claire turned to Miles.
"Can I see the container?"
Elena immediately said, "No."
Claire looked at her.
"Why?"
"Because you are a person of interest in an active investigation involving a container tied to your credentials."
"Those records may explain the trust."
"And walking into a police evidence scene will not help you."
Dominic looked at Miles.
"Can she identify which records are missing from the company archive?"
Miles considered it.
"Possibly at the terminal office, not inside the container."
Claire nodded.
"Then let's go."
Charles said, "Claire, no."
She turned toward him.
"Stop saying my name like it is a command."
The sentence silenced the room.
Charles's face hardened.
"If those documents contain privileged company information, you cannot simply hand them to Dominic."
Dominic's expression cooled.
"I have not asked for them."
"You don't have to."
Charles pointed toward Claire.
"She's doing exactly what Anne did."
Claire's heartbeat changed.
"What does that mean?"
Charles realized the mistake.
"Nothing."
"No."
She stepped toward him.
"You said Mom was paranoid."
"She was."
"Now you say I'm doing what she did."
"Destroying this family because you need to prove you're smarter than everyone."
The cruelty was familiar.
The context was not.
Claire looked at Rebecca.
Her stepmother was staring at Charles as if seeing him clearly for the first time.
Madison looked angry, but the anger no longer had a clear target.
Lauren's hands were trembling.
The family portrait was cracking in public.
Claire should have felt satisfaction.
She felt tired.
Detective Miles broke the silence.
"Ms. Whitmore, if you are willing to review an inventory at the terminal, that would be useful."
"I am."
"Your attorney can accompany you."
Elena nodded.
Dominic said, "I will stay here."
Claire looked at him in surprise.
"Why?"
"Because Richard left his laptop."
Everyone looked toward the empty chair.
The laptop was gone.
Dominic's eyes narrowed.
"And because he should not have had time to leave the building before the elevators were secured."
Tomas checked his phone.
"He didn't."
Claire felt cold.
"Where is he?"
Tomas looked toward the service corridor.
"Still inside."
Dominic's voice hardened.
"Find him."
Claire left with Elena and Detective Miles.
The drive to Dundalk took twenty minutes.
Neither woman spoke for the first five.
Then Elena looked over from the back seat.
"You are processing too many things at once."
Claire stared out the window.
"Is that legal advice?"
"Human advice."
"I'm not sure I know what to do with that."
Elena almost smiled.
"Then start with one fact."
Claire considered it.
"My father forged my mother's trust termination."
"Likely."
"That's not a fact yet."
"Correct."
Claire tried again.
"Someone used my identity to authorize shipments."
"Good."
"Someone wearing Mom's necklace used my identity last night."
"Good."
"Martha saw Mom alive after her recorded time of death."
Elena nodded.
"Also good."
Claire looked at her.
"None of this feels good."
"Facts do not have to feel good."
The terminal office was a low concrete building surrounded by fences, cranes, and stacks of containers.
Detective Miles led them into a secure records room.
A federal customs investigator was waiting.
She introduced herself as Special Agent Renee Holt.
Claire's stomach tightened again.
Federal involvement meant the problem was expanding.
Holt did not waste time.
"We found forty-seven archive boxes."
She slid an inventory sheet across the table.
Claire read the labels.
2008 PORT MAINTENANCE.
2009 FUEL SURCHARGES.
2010 VENDOR SETTLEMENTS.
2011 VALE ROUTE RECONCILIATION.
2011 BELL CONSULTING.
Claire stopped.
"Bell Consulting."
Holt nodded.
"Does that mean something?"
"My mother's maiden name was Bell."
The agent made a note.
"The boxes were removed from an off-site warehouse owned by Whitmore Freight."
"Which one?"
"Essex archive facility."
Claire frowned.
"That site was closed three years ago."
"Apparently not completely."
Holt turned over another sheet.
"Utilities have remained active."
Claire looked at the account number.
She recognized it.
"This expense is buried under Pier Seven maintenance."
"Who approves that cost center?"
"Richard."
Elena asked, "And Charles?"
"Every payment above fifty thousand dollars."
Agent Holt leaned back.
"The archive facility received monthly payments of twelve thousand eight hundred dollars for three years."
Claire did the arithmetic automatically.
"Four hundred sixty thousand eight hundred."
Holt nodded.
"You see why we wanted someone who knows the books."
Claire hated that she still knew the company well enough to help investigate it.
Holt slid a tablet toward her.
"We also recovered this from the container's exterior camera."
A video began.
The woman in the navy dress approached the dispatch office at 11:11 p.m.
She kept her face turned away.
She entered with a badge.
Thirty seconds later, she emerged.
For one second, wind moved her hair.
Claire leaned closer.
The woman's profile appeared.
Not enough to identify.
But enough to see age.
She was not thirty.
She was older.
Fifties, perhaps.
Claire's mouth went dry.
Anne would have been fifty-six.
The woman raised one hand to secure her hair.
A scar crossed the back of it.
Claire stopped the video.
"Go back."
Holt did.
"There."
Elena leaned closer.
"You recognize the scar?"
Claire remembered a summer afternoon when she was six.
Her mother had dropped a glass casserole dish.
Claire had run barefoot toward the shards.
Anne had grabbed her and cut the back of her own hand badly enough to require stitches.
The scar had been long and curved.
Exactly like this one.
Claire's eyes filled before she could stop them.
"My mother had that scar."
No one spoke.
Agent Holt's expression stayed neutral.
"Scars are not fingerprints."
"I know."
Claire watched the woman again.
The posture was wrong.
The walk was wrong.
Anne had moved quickly.
This woman moved with a slight stiffness in her left leg.
Fifteen years could explain that.
Or it could be someone deliberately copying visible details.
The video ended.
Holt reached for the tablet.
Claire caught one more detail.
"Wait."
The woman had placed something on the dispatch counter.
A folded piece of white paper.
"Do you have that?"
Holt looked at Miles.
He opened an evidence envelope.
Inside was a photocopy of the note.
The original had been seized.
Claire read the handwriting.
It was Anne's.
Or an excellent imitation.
The note contained one sentence.
Claire is not the one who should be afraid of what is in those boxes.
Below it were two initials.
A.B.
Claire felt the room narrow.
Her phone rang.
Dominic.
Elena answered on speaker.
"What happened?"
His voice was clipped.
"Richard is gone."
Claire looked at the locked terminal door.
"You said he was still in the building."
"He was."
"Then how did he leave?"
"Through a maintenance tunnel connecting the old warehouse to the storm-drain access."
Claire stared at the phone.
She had worked there twelve years and never known such a tunnel existed.
Dominic continued.
"We found his laptop."
"What's on it?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"The drive was physically removed."
Agent Holt's expression sharpened.
"When?"
"We don't know."
Claire heard voices behind Dominic.
Then he said something that changed the temperature of the room.
"We also found blood."
Claire's hand tightened around the table.
"Richard's?"
"We don't know that either."
"How much?"
Dominic paused.
"Enough that he may not have left willingly."
The call ended three minutes later.
Agent Holt looked at Claire.
"You need to understand something."
"What?"
"Your mother's old records, the false filings, the missing CFO, and last night's attempted removal of evidence are no longer separate events."
Claire looked at the paused image of the older woman wearing Anne's pendant.
"I know."
Holt shook her head.
"No."
Her gaze hardened.
"I don't think you do yet."
She opened another evidence file.
Inside was a passenger manifest from an international flight that landed in Baltimore three days earlier.
One passenger had traveled under the name Anna Bell.
May you like
The date of birth was one digit different from Anne's.
The emergency contact listed on the booking was a number registered to Victor Vale.
