Chapter 4 - The Woman in the Photograph
Harlan didn't sleep.
Rue knew because neither did she.
At five in the morning, she found him sitting alone in the kitchen with a cup of coffee he hadn't touched.
Without the security men and the tailored clothes, he looked different.
Still dangerous.
Just tired.
Rue opened a cabinet.
“Where are the mugs?”
Harlan pointed.
She poured coffee.
“You have a kitchen the size of my apartment.”
“You exaggerate.”
“My apartment is four hundred square feet.”
He looked at her.
“Seriously?”
“Detroit real estate isn't equally kind to everyone.”
She sat opposite him.
For a while, neither spoke.
Then Harlan said, “Marianne died when Belle was eighteen months old.”
Rue hadn't asked.
She listened.
“Car accident?”
“Cancer.”
That surprised her.
“She fought for eleven months.”
His fingers tightened around the mug.
“I could buy hospitals. Specialists. Experimental treatment. None of it mattered.”
There was no self-pity in his voice.
That made it worse.
“Belle remembers her?”
“Pictures. Stories.”
Rue looked toward the ceiling.
“She loves you.”
“I know.”
“You're terrified.”
Harlan looked at her sharply.
Rue shrugged.
“You hide it badly.”
“Nobody has ever accused me of that.”
“Maybe nobody wanted to risk getting fired.”
A short sound escaped him.
Almost a laugh.
Then his expression darkened.
“I failed her.”
“No.”
“She disappeared from my house.”
“That doesn't mean you failed her.”
“I employ forty-three people to make sure things like that cannot happen.”
Rue leaned forward.
“Harlan, children aren't corporate assets. You can't security-system your way out of every bad thing.”
His gaze held hers.
“You say that very confidently for somebody who met me six hours ago.”
“I've met scared fathers before.”
“Waiting tables?”
“People tell waitresses everything.”
“Why?”
“Because we're invisible.”
Something about that answer stayed between them.
Then Belle appeared.
She carried Waffles beneath one arm.
Rue smiled.
“What are you doing awake?”
“Couldn't sleep.”
Belle climbed onto the chair beside Rue.
Harlan immediately moved his coffee away from her reach.
Tiny gesture.
Automatic.
Rue noticed.
Belle noticed the photograph on the counter.
The one thrown through the window.
Her face changed.
“Her.”
Harlan stood.
“What?”
Belle pointed.
Not at Rue.
At a woman in the background.
Rue hadn't noticed her.
A brunette crossing the street twenty feet behind Rue.
Harlan picked up the photograph.
“You know her?”
Belle nodded.
“Flower lady.”
The kitchen became silent.
Harlan enlarged the image.
Victor entered moments later and stared at it.
“No.”
“What?” Rue asked.
Victor looked at Harlan.
“That's Celeste.”
Rue waited.
Harlan's face had become unreadable.
“My father's second wife.”
“Your stepmother?”
“Yes.”
Celeste Voss had been married to Augustus for nine years before his death.
She lived mostly in New York now but retained a seat on the Voss Meridian charitable foundation.
She also wore the same perfume for twenty years.
Gardenias.
Belle had said the woman smelled like flowers.
Victor swore softly.
“She's been in Detroit for a week.”
Harlan turned.
“You knew?”
“She called me.”
“And you didn't tell me?”
“She said she wanted to discuss selling Meridian.”
Rue stood.
“There it is again.”
The theater.
Everything returned to that building.
By noon, Jonah had gathered enough information to make the pattern impossible to ignore.
Celeste had visited Harlan's office twice that month.
She'd had access to the house the night Belle disappeared.
And she had chaired the charity auction where one pair of Voss cuff links had been sold seventeen years earlier.
But none of it proved she had taken Belle.
Rue refused to jump to the easy answer.
“Why photograph me before I found Belle?”
Nobody knew.
Until Elias Trent arrived.
The family attorney looked sick.
He carried an old envelope.
“Harlan, there's something your father instructed me never to open unless the Meridian property was sold.”
Victor stared at him.
“You've had that this whole time?”
“Yes.”
Harlan took the envelope.
Inside was a key.
And a handwritten note.
If Meridian is ever threatened, open vault 17.
Rue looked around.
“You people really do live like this.”
Victor almost smiled.
Harlan didn't.
They went to the theater that afternoon.
Rue argued about going.
Harlan argued harder.
She went anyway.
The Meridian Theater had been magnificent once.
Now dust covered red velvet seats. Gold paint peeled from balconies. A chandelier hung dark above the lobby.
Beneath the stage, they found a corridor.
At its end stood seventeen steel archive doors.
Vault 17 opened with Augustus's key.
Inside were boxes.
Ledgers.
Contracts.
Photographs.
Rue picked up one dated twenty-nine years earlier.
Harlan and Victor searched financial records.
Then Rue found her own last name.
CALLAWAY.
Her heart stopped.
“Harlan.”
He came over.
The file contained employment records.
Samuel Callaway.
Rue's father.
She hadn't seen that name on paper in years.
He had died when she was nine.
“What was your father?” Harlan asked.
“Accountant.”
Victor opened another folder.
“Not just any accountant.”
Samuel Callaway had worked for Augustus Voss.
Rue sat down.
“No.”
Harlan read the records.
Samuel had been an internal auditor.
Two months before his death, he'd discovered irregular transfers involving Voss Meridian property accounts.
Millions.
The transfers had been authorized by Celeste.
Rue felt the room tilt.
“My dad died in a robbery.”
Harlan looked at her.
“Are you sure?”
“That was what the police said.”
Victor found another document.
A handwritten note from Augustus.
SAMUEL KNOWS. CELESTE KNOWS HE KNOWS.
Rue stopped breathing.
All those years.
Her mother refusing to discuss her father's work.
The sudden funeral.
The unpaid debts.
The years afterward when everything collapsed.
Rue had thought it was bad luck.
Maybe it hadn't been.
Then Harlan found a sealed letter.
On the front:
FOR RUE CALLAWAY.
Her knees nearly gave out.
“My father knew you,” Harlan said.
“No.”
“He knew about you.”
Rue opened it.
Inside, Augustus Voss had written only six lines.
Samuel tried to protect this family from what Celeste was doing.
If anything happens to him, his daughter must be protected.
I failed Samuel once.
I will not fail Rue.
The remaining proof is not here.
The child knows where.
Rue read the final sentence again.
“The child?”
Harlan went pale.
“Belle.”
Behind them, a door slammed.
Jonah ran into the corridor.
“Harlan.”
“What?”
“Belle's security detail just called.”
Harlan's face changed instantly.
Jonah swallowed.
“Celeste Voss entered the house ten minutes ago.”
Rue looked at the letter.
The child knows where.
Harlan was already running.
May you like
And for the second time in twenty-four hours, somebody who knew the Voss family secrets was alone with Belle.
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