Chapter 5

Owen Price agreed to meet in a café beside the public library, provided I came with my lawyer and didn't bring a recorder.

"He's frightened," Tomas said as we crossed the street.

"Of Adrian?"

"Let's let him tell us."

Owen stood when we approached. He had lost weight since his farewell dinner. His collar sat away from his neck, and he kept one hand around his coffee without drinking it.

"You look like your father," he said.

That nearly finished me before we began.

Tomas explained whom he represented and that Owen could have his own lawyer. We weren't asking him to violate obligations or take records he had no right to possess.

Owen nodded.

"I've spoken to someone. He said I can describe what happened to me."

He opened a folder.

Inside were his termination letter, correspondence about his departure, and a copy of a memorandum he had written while still controller. He said his lawyer had reviewed what he could share.

"I wasn't retiring," he said. "I raised questions about payments to Ashdown Advisory. Two weeks later, I was told my position was being restructured."

The café door opened. Owen stopped speaking until the newcomer passed our table.

"What payments?" Tomas asked.

"Fees attributed to property sourcing. Some transactions had already been negotiated before Ashdown supposedly introduced them. The amounts weren't small."

"Do you know who owned Ashdown?"

"No. I asked. Vivian said the relationship was commercially sensitive."

My coffee tasted metallic.

"And my father?"

Owen looked at me for a long moment.

"Daniel thought the Harbor contribution had been understated. He wanted the supporting valuation and the side agreements. I couldn't give him everything without authorization, but I told him which records to request."

"Adrian said he was confused."

"Your father could still calculate a room's operating margin in his head when he could barely stand."

I put both hands beneath the table so Owen wouldn't see them shaking.

There was a day in the hospital when Dad had asked me to bring his blue folder. I brought soup instead. Adrian said work would agitate him. I had wanted a quiet afternoon with my father more than I wanted another argument with my husband.

The memory would not let me look away.

"Why didn't you call me?" I asked.

Owen's expression hardened, not with anger but with an old disappointment.

"I did. Your assistant said you were unavailable. Then you sent a message saying financial questions should go through Adrian."

I remembered sending that message.

There was no assistant to blame. No intercepted email. I had been tired and overwhelmed, and I had chosen the answer that required the least of me.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Owen looked down at his untouched coffee.

"I don't need you to be sorry for me. I need you to understand that they may tell you this is personal. Bitter old employee. Bitter wife. They use whatever makes the numbers easier to ignore."

Tomas asked careful questions. Dates. People present. Where original records should be held. What Owen had seen directly and what he suspected. He marked each distinction.

By the time we left, we had no proof of a secret fortune and no convenient confession. We had a pattern worth investigating, a witness with something to lose, and several records that should exist.

It was enough to begin.

Owen carefully returned each original to his folder after Tomas identified what could be copied. The ritual took several minutes. I noticed how precisely he aligned the corners, how often he checked the clasp before closing it. These papers had spent eighteen months being the only things that agreed with his memory. I understood why he handled them like something fragile, even though the danger had never been to the paper itself.

Outside, Owen touched my elbow.

"Your father talked about your first hotel all the time. The one you redesigned when the contractor quit."

"The Marlow."

"He said you understood buildings because you understood the people inside them."

I swallowed.

"I haven't worked on a property in three years."

"That doesn't mean you forgot how."

On the drive back, Tomas let the silence sit between us until I could speak.

"What if I helped them? By not looking."

"Then looking now matters. But we're not going to replace evidence with guilt either."

At Mara's apartment, I opened the old project files I had kept from my own work. Floor plans. Supplier notes. A photograph of me in a hard hat, standing beside Dad in the unfinished Marlow lobby.

Adrian wasn't in that photograph.

I had forgotten there were important days he hadn't been part of.

An email arrived from Vale House's lawyers at six forty-three. They disputed the scope of our information request and asked for an extension.

Tomas forwarded it with one sentence.

Predictable. We will respond tomorrow.

I printed Owen's memorandum and put it beside Dad's letter.

Then I added a third sheet, with a heading in my own handwriting.

Questions I should have asked.

This time, I intended to wait for answers.