Chapter 7 - THE SILVER WATCH
Cassian moved first.
Not toward Hayes.
Toward me.
He stopped beside my chair but didn’t touch me.
I was grateful.
If anyone touched me, I might shatter.
Hayes stood beneath the fluorescent lights holding that silver watch as if it weighed fifty pounds.
“What does ‘helped’ mean?”
My voice barely came out.
He wiped his face.
“My wife, Margaret, needed surgery. Insurance refused part of it. We were drowning.”
“So Malcolm bought you.”
“No.”
“Then choose a better word.”
He nodded.
“He found out I had changed vendor invoices.”
Vivian stared.
“You stole?”
“Eighteen thousand dollars.”
Hayes looked at me.
“I intended to repay it.”
“That matters to you?”
“Not enough.”
He opened the watch.
Margaret’s photograph sat opposite Evelyn’s note.
A woman with kind eyes.
I remembered her vaguely from childhood.
“She was dying,” he said. “Malcolm discovered the invoices. He told me he could call the police or classify the money as a medical advance.”
My stomach turned.
“What did he want?”
Hayes swallowed.
“One favor.”
Nobody spoke.
“The Weiss score had been removed from the archive by Malcolm. I didn’t know why. He gave it to Dennis Cole.”
Vivian whispered, “Oh God.”
“I was told to leave Thomas’s tool case unlocked when security inspected the workshop.”
My throat closed.
“That’s all?”
Hayes looked at me.
“No.”
Of course not.
“What else?”
“Cole put the score inside. I signed the inventory sheet saying the case had been sealed all evening.”
“You lied.”
“Yes.”
“My father was accused because you lied.”
“Yes.”
“Did Dad know?”
“Not at first.”
I stood so quickly the chair rolled backward.
“You let him think somebody else did it?”
“For six months.”
The room blurred.
Then Hayes said the worst part.
“I confessed to him.”
I stared.
“When?”
“After Margaret died.”
“And Dad didn’t turn you in?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Hayes’s voice cracked.
“Because he was Thomas.”
That made me furious.
“Don’t make his goodness sound noble when it only made his life harder.”
“I’m not.”
“You kept your job.”
“Yes.”
“He lost his name.”
“Yes.”
“You went to Christmas dinners with the Ashcrofts.”
“Yes.”
“My father fixed school pianos until his hands cramped.”
Hayes lowered his head.
“Yes.”
I wanted to hate him.
That would have been easier.
Instead I remembered him sitting outside Dad’s hospital room with vending-machine coffee.
I remembered him finding work for me at Blackthorn after the funeral.
Had that been kindness?
Guilt?
Both?
“Why did Dad keep quiet?”
Hayes looked at me.
“He said exposing me would prove the score had been planted, but not who ordered it. Malcolm would call me a thief trying to save myself. Cole would deny everything.”
“So Dad kept gathering evidence.”
“Yes.”
“The photograph.”
“Yes.”
“The contract page.”
“Yes.”
“The settlement.”
“Yes.”
Cassian spoke.
“And Victor?”
Hayes nodded.
“Thomas believed Victor could force Malcolm to return the money.”
“Could he?”
“He tried.”
Vivian turned toward him.
“What happened?”
“Malcolm threatened to expose financial irregularities in Voss shipping contracts connected to the Bellweather acquisition.”
Cassian’s face hardened.
“My father had his own dirt.”
“Yes.”
No surprise there.
Cassian looked almost relieved.
Not because Victor was corrupt.
Because the story finally made sense.
Two powerful men had trapped each other.
And one piano technician without money had been crushed between them.
I looked at Cassian.
“Your father could have gone public.”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t.”
“No.”
“Because it would hurt him too.”
“Yes.”
The direct answers mattered.
He did not hide behind his father.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You didn’t do it.”
“No.”
“But I benefited from it.”
That was the first time anyone had said the sentence I needed.
Vivian sat quietly.
Then she removed the emerald silk wrap from her shoulders.
For the first time all night, she seemed smaller.
“My entire childhood, my father told me Bellweather failed because Thomas stole the Weiss score and donors panicked.”
Hayes looked at her.
“Some donors did leave.”
“So it wasn’t completely false.”
“No.”
“But he caused the scandal that made them leave.”
“Yes.”
Vivian laughed once, bitterly.
“He set the fire and blamed the smoke.”
Nobody answered.
Cassian returned to the ledger.
“There’s still one thing wrong.”
“What?”
“The $2.43 million.”
He tapped the page.
“Victor ordered Malcolm to hold it. Malcolm moved it. Victor discovered the fraud. But the account records say that five months later, Voss Holdings paid another $2.43 million.”
My heart jumped.
“To Dad?”
Cassian shook his head.
“That’s the problem.”
The payment had gone to a numbered escrow account.
No beneficiary listed in the old ledger.
Hayes frowned.
“Thomas never mentioned receiving money.”
“He didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
I almost laughed.
“Because we were nearly evicted twice.”
Cassian searched another folder.
A canceled cashier’s check appeared near the back.
$2,430,000.
Issued by Voss Holdings.
The payee line was typed:
T.M. BENEFIT RESERVE.
On the back was a bank stamp.
Then a handwritten transfer instruction.
Vivian leaned closer.
“What does that say?”
Cassian went very still.
I read it.
TRANSFER TO BELLWEATHER YOUTH TRUST.
Falk blinked.
“I’ve never heard of that.”
Vivian had.
Her face changed.
“There was a youth scholarship fund.”
Hayes nodded slowly.
“Thomas started it.”
My throat tightened.
Dad used to give free tuning lessons to kids whose parents couldn’t pay for music classes.
“Why would he put two million dollars into a scholarship fund when we had nothing?”
Hayes looked at me.
“Because he didn’t.”
Cassian flipped the check over again.
There was another endorsement beneath the bank stamp.
Not Thomas.
Not Malcolm.
Victor Voss.
My anger flared.
“Your father redirected it?”
Cassian shook his head.
“He authorized the reserve. That doesn’t prove he controlled the final transfer.”
Vivian pulled the old youth trust binder from an archive list.
“Wait.”
She scanned it.
“The Bellweather Youth Trust was dissolved one month before this check.”
Nobody moved.
A payment had been sent to a fund that no longer existed.
Cassian searched corporate transactions around the same date.
There.
The money had bounced back.
Not to Voss Holdings.
To a private account.
Account holder:
M. ASHCROFT, TRUSTEE.
Vivian closed her eyes.
“My father took it twice.”
“Looks that way,” Cassian said.
“No.”
Hayes spoke from behind us.
We turned.
He had opened the back of his silver watch farther than I had ever seen.
A second inner plate lifted.
Inside was a tiny folded bank receipt.
Hayes handed it to me.
“Thomas gave me this the last time I saw him at Bellweather.”
The receipt showed the private account.
But the handwritten name beside it was not Malcolm Ashcroft.
It was mine.
ELENA MARLOW — BENEFICIARY.
I stared at Hayes.
“What is this?”
His voice shook.
“Your father knew the money had been stolen again.”
“And?”
“He told me if anything happened to him, that receipt proved the account had been created for you.”
Vivian frowned.
“Then why is my father listed as trustee?”
Hayes looked toward her.
“Because Thomas trusted the wrong man one final time.”
I thought that was the revelation.
It wasn’t.
Cassian turned the receipt toward the light.
On the reverse side, Thomas had written one sentence.
ARTHUR KNOWS WHERE THE ORIGINAL IS.
I looked at Hayes.
“The original what?”
His face went white.
“The contract.”
My heart pounded.
“You said you never saw it again.”
“I didn’t.”
“That is not what Dad wrote.”
Hayes closed the watch.
“I never saw the contract.”
He looked straight at me.
“But I know who took it from Victor.”
“Who?”
Hayes whispered the name.
May you like
“Samuel Weiss.”
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