My phone buzzed simultaneously.
It was a text from Allison to both of us.
“How does Allison have your number?” I asked.
“I have no idea. But focus Harper.”
Been busy on this and finally got some answers. Got invoices St. Clair's firm submitted for reimbursement on the Belle Rêve contract, going back to March. Micro-engraving kit. Spring-tension jeweler's clamps. A set of watchmaker's files small enough to work inside a hollow shaft. All billed to a supplier in Metairie, all delivered to St. Clair Preservation and Restoration.
Another text followed that one.
Eleven days before the gala.
Eleven days. Not the frantic, sloppy window of a man improvising in a panic. Eleven days of a man with a workbench, and a motive he'd been sitting on for twenty years, and precisely the skill set nobody in that dining room had thought twice about, because a preservation architect handling old silver was the least suspicious thing in the world.
Until it wasn't.
"He had the tools," I said. "He had the access. He had a woman about to burn his entire career to the ground in front of two hundred people, in writing, with a paper trail he didn't know she'd already built." I looked at the unsent letter again, at Evelyn's aggressive, confident scrawl, a woman who'd spent her whole life making sure the story got told her way, right up until someone made very sure it never got told at all. "The portico wasn't the wound, Hollis. It was the warning shot. This was the kill."
Hollis was already standing, badge clipped to his belt, the folder tucked under one arm like evidence he had no intention of losing custody of again.
“Where does Hyacinth fit into all of this? Why would Evelyn tell her to switch the straws? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“She switched them back without knowing,” Hollis said. “Evelyn was onto Reginald. She knew he would switch the straws?”
“I don’t know…” That didn’t seem right.
"Where is Reginald right now?"
I already had my phone out and texted Allison.
You’re amazing! Where is Reginald now?
In the parlor playing checkers against himself.
That seemed very fitting.
"Midnight House," I said. "He's at Midnight House."
We didn't talk on the drive over. Teddy sat rigid in the back seat like he understood the assignment, and I gripped the folder in my lap the whole way, Evelyn's unsent letter riding on top, three sentences that had gotten her killed sitting there in ink like they weighed nothing at all.
Reginald's rental car was still in the driveway when we pulled up, and through the parlor window I could see him standing at the base of the staircase, one hand resting on the newel post, looking up at the chandelier the way he always did.
He turned when the front door opened. Whatever he saw on my face, or on Hollis's, or in the folder under Hollis's arm, he didn't ask what was wrong.
He just stood there and stared.
"Reginald," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt, "we need to talk about the 1987 restoration file."
Eighteen
Reginald didn't protest. He didn’t run. He didn’t even react at all. Just stood there, like he was resigned to his fate.
I'll give him that much, in the end. A guilty man with a rental car in the driveway and a flight at four o'clock had options, and he stood there at the base of my staircase with one hand on the newel post and let us come to him.
"The 1987 file," he repeated, like the words needed testing before he could commit to them out loud. "I don't know what you think you found, Harper, but restoration paperwork from forty years ago is hardly proof of anything."
“What would I need to prove?” I asked, feeling a little triumph. His words were an admission on their own, weren’t they?
