A section of wall, the corner of a heavy wooden door, and at the base of that door, barely visible in the hallway’s overhead light, a strip of printer paper.
It had slid partway out from under the door or been pushed there by accident.
She could see only a portion of the text. She photographed it. Three shots. Even partial, it was enough to read two lines.
Authorization for transfer of account 7741C to offshore account designated signature C. Briggs executed. She pulled the panel closed, moved the desk back to its exact position, finished the baseboard.
Her hands were steady, which surprised her. She stood in the center of the room and thought about what she had.
Not enough. A partial sentence. A signature initial that could mean anything. But combined with what Phyllis had told her about vendor contracts and financial questions, combined with Callaway’s lab results and 8 months of a fiance who asked the wrong questions too casually and knew the estate better than the woman who’d managed it for 6 years, it was starting to form a shape.
She needed to get into that room. She was still working through uh when she turned the corner at the end of the hallway and nearly collided with Celestine Harrow.
They stopped 2 ft apart. Celestine held a leather portfolio under one arm, a coffee cup in the other hand.
This time, the gray eyes were different. Not calculating exactly, but engaged in a way they hadn’t been before.
The look of someone who has noticed that the piece they assumed was fixed has moved.
You’re very thorough, Celestine said. I try to be. A small tilt of the head.
When you saw what you saw at the party, the pause was unhurried, deliberate. What exactly did you think you saw?
Imani held her gaze. Someone who cared about Mr. Briggs’s safety. The silence lasted 3 seconds.
Then Celestine smiled, that beautiful, constructed, precisely calibrated smile, and leaned in slightly, dropping her voice to something that might have sounded from a distance like warmth.
You have no idea, she said quietly, what happens to girls like you who poke around in houses like this?
She walked away. Imani stood in the hallway and let the sentence settle over her like cold water.
The specific cold of a threat that doesn’t need to raise its voice because it’s certain of its own weight.
She breathed through it. She looked at the three photographs on her phone. She thought about Reuben and Thursday’s appointment and the billing department and the documentation that had arrived from Callaway’s attorney’s office on Wednesday, marked confidential medical trust.
She thought about the strip of paper under the door and what was on the other side of it.
She texted Callaway. I need to talk to you. Not at the estate. His reply came back in 11 seconds.
Tomorrow. Coffee on Michigan Ave. 8:00 a.m. She put the phone away and went back to work.
She was going to get into that room, but she was going to be smart about it.
The coffee place on Michigan Avenue was the kind of establishment that existed in the narrow corridor between accessible and exclusive.
