Chapter 4 - The Server Who Wasn't Sick
For once, the most important clue in Saraphene’s life came from a payroll office, not from a dark hallway. The staffing agency’s invoice bore her full name and a reference code assigned at 10:06 on Saturday morning. She had been called on Tuesday at 11:40 a.m., after someone supposedly reported sick. The two dates could not describe the same innocent last-minute substitution.
Leah called the agency’s compliance manager on speaker, with Saraphene’s permission. The woman, Yvette Price, sounded offended by the suggestion that her staff had falsified anything. Then Leah read the reference code.
Silence stretched over the line.
“That order came through a client override,” Yvette said. “The gallery reserved Miss Winters specifically. I can preserve the order and send it to the investigating officer if they request it.”
“Who authorized it?” Saraphene asked.
“Marco Ivers. The banquet manager.”
For three years, Marco had never called Saraphene by her first name. On Tuesday, he had managed to request her by her entire legal name.
“Please preserve the original message,” Leah said. “And the sick-call record.”
“There isn’t one,” Yvette replied.
After the call, Jo leaned against the office radiator. “So Marco lied about why you were there.”
“He did,” Saraphene said. “But that doesn’t tell us why.”
Leah was pleased by the distinction. A good question did not become an answer merely because its likely answer frightened everybody.
The detective assigned to the art theft, Delia Grant, called before lunch. She was willing to take Saraphene’s statement that afternoon, with Leah present, and to review the harassment report separately. The gallery’s private security company had already turned over the badge log, but its initial report referred to Saraphene as a person of interest. Grant made no promise about changing that description.
“I care about what the evidence shows,” she said. “I’m not asking you to solve the case for me.”
Saraphene nearly laughed. For eight months, so many adults had asked her to manage Trent’s choices that the prospect of someone else doing her own job felt miraculous.
She told Grant about the tray with the damaged handle. The detective showed her a still image from the restoration corridor. Saraphene pointed to the silver edge. “That one. The bend near the left grip.”
“You’re certain?”
“I carried it for four hours. My wrist still hurts from compensating for the weight.”
The detective enlarged the image, then set it aside without announcing a conclusion. She asked what the intruder in the bathroom had sounded like. Saraphene described the slight rasp and the sentence about seeing someone enter. She explained that she had not seen his face.
“You resisted the urge to guess,” Grant said. “Thank you.”
At the end of the interview, Grant showed them a photograph of Rain on the Breakwater as it had hung on the auction wall. A narrow line of wet-looking blue paint ran above the horizon. The work looked ordinary to Saraphene, a dark shore under an approaching storm.
“I remember that painting,” she said.
Grant sat up. “From the night?”
“Yes. I passed it when I brought drinks to table seven. Someone had left a little white cleaning cloth underneath the frame, like they’d just polished the glass.”
“There wasn’t glass,” Selian said when Leah later asked him about it. “Oil on canvas. No protective glazing.”
“Then why was there a cloth?” Jo asked.
“Someone may have wiped the frame,” Saraphene replied. “I didn’t see what they were doing. I only saw what they left.”
Leah asked the gallery, in writing, to retain all photographs taken around that wall before the auction. A junior event photographer named Miles Benton had captured a wide-angle shot at 8:51 p.m. The painting stood in its usual place. A folded white cloth lay behind the small floral arrangement beneath it.
In another photograph, taken thirty-four minutes later, the cloth had vanished. The painting remained. The placard beneath it had shifted almost an inch to the right.
“That could mean someone straightened the display,” Selian said.
“Or someone changed more than the display,” Saraphene answered.
She was exhausted by the time they finished reviewing the images. Exhaustion made her feel thirteen again, sitting at the kitchen table while her mother worked a late shift, trying to get through homework without admitting how frightened she was of the dark. She called Lillian and asked whether it was still all right to stay another night.
“Of course,” the older woman said. “I made soup.”
It was the first invitation that week with no hidden condition.
At Lillian’s apartment, Saraphene discovered three missed calls from Trent’s old number. She saved the call log without responding. Then she looked again at the 8:51 gallery photograph. The corner of the image reflected a man leaning over a display case. His face was out of focus, but his left sleeve carried a bright rectangular cuff link.
She had seen that cuff link somewhere before.
Not on Trent.
On the man standing beside him in the gallery: the one who had laughed when Trent touched the woman in red.
Leah also arranged for Saraphene to sign a dated witness statement identifying the cuff link as an observation, not a positive identification. She had seen the bright rectangle on somebody’s sleeve, but the camera angle could have distorted its color. Detective Grant could compare the photographer’s original images with the gallery’s visitor records without treating her memory as a conviction.
May you like
On her way out, Saraphene stopped at the café supply shop to replace the blister pads she had used under her ill-fitting heels. Standing at the register, she realized she had spent two days talking about expensive paintings and security badges while barely noticing her own sore feet. She bought the pads, ate a sandwich, and sent Jo a message saying she would be home for dinner. Protecting her own ordinary routines would not solve the theft. It would give her enough strength to help solve the part that mattered to her.
Somebody had wanted Saraphene in that room while a painting changed hands. Now she had a clearer question for Detective Grant: who had been standing close enough to the painting to move it before the auction began?
