Chapter 2 - The Memory Card
Nathaniel ordered the ballroom locked again.
This time, he kept the key.
He also asked me and Sophia to remain on the estate.
I told him I already lived there.
“That isn’t what I mean,” he said.
We were standing in his study after the children had been taken upstairs by the night nanny.
Nathaniel closed the door.
“I mean don’t leave the property until I know what Evelyn found.”
My back stiffened.
“Mr. Reed, I work for you. You don’t own me.”
His expression changed immediately.
“You’re right.”
The answer surprised me.
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“I’m sorry.”
I had never heard him apologize to staff.
“Someone hid that recording,” he continued. “Someone knew where Evelyn put it or knew enough to leave the ballroom untouched. Your daughter found something that may matter to my wife’s death.”
“My daughter found a video.”
“And now Julian knows we found it.”
That part frightened me.
“Do you think he’s dangerous?”
Nathaniel stared at the fire.
“I think Julian has been managing the foundation finances for six years.”
Not an answer.
But close enough.
The memory card would not open on Nathaniel’s laptop.
“Encrypted,” he said.
He called no one from his corporate technology department.
Instead, he retrieved an old computer from a locked cabinet.
“Evelyn used this for foundation work,” he explained.
The card opened.
There were twelve folders.
Most were ordinary spreadsheets.
Donor reports.
Clinic budgets.
Grant disbursements.
Then Nathaniel opened a folder titled BWC.
Brightwell Children’s Clinics.
A spreadsheet listed payments totaling nearly twenty-eight million dollars over four years.
I stared.
“That’s a lot of money.”
“Too much.”
“You know their budget?”
“I know every major foundation commitment.”
He scrolled.
The payments had been divided among six clinics.
Nathaniel opened another file.
Photographs.
Closed storefronts.
Empty lots.
A warehouse.
None looked like medical clinics.
His jaw tightened.
“These addresses are fake.”
Another file contained copies of internal authorization forms.
Every one bore Julian’s electronic signature.
I looked at Nathaniel.
“That seems pretty direct.”
“Too direct.”
“What does that mean?”
“Julian is careful.”
He opened another document.
It was a scanned handwritten page from Evelyn.
J uses secondary approvals. Someone above or beside him protects it.
Nathaniel read that line quietly.
“Above Julian?”
“Who’s above him?”
“No one in the foundation except me.”
I understood why his face changed.
“You didn’t approve these.”
“No.”
“Then someone forged your authorization?”
“Or Evelyn thought I was involved.”
The idea hurt him.
I could see it.
He opened the next file.
An audio recording.
Evelyn’s voice.
“October third. I met with Martin Lowe from Brightwell. He says his clinic never received a Reed Foundation grant. The account listed under his organization is not his. I checked four other clinics. Same problem.”
The recording skipped.
“I told Julian I wanted an independent audit. He told me Nathaniel already knew about the restructuring. I don’t believe him.”
Nathaniel leaned back.
“She came to me that week.”
“What did she say?”
“That she was worried about the foundation.”
“And?”
“I told her Julian handled operations.”
His face tightened.
“I was preparing a merger. I barely looked up from my phone.”
There was no need to punish him.
He was already doing it himself.
Another audio file played.
Evelyn sounded frightened.
“October ninth. Someone entered my office last night. The backup drive was moved. I told Julian I had copied everything elsewhere. I should not have told him that.”
Nathaniel stopped the recording.
“Her gala was October tenth.”
The night before she died.
I felt cold.
“Did police ever look at any of this?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because her death was certified natural.”
“What exactly happened?”
He looked at me.
“Evelyn had a congenital rhythm disorder. Mild. Controlled. She wore a monitor during high-stress events.”
I remembered something.
“The video mentioned she collapsed at the gala.”
“Yes.”
“Was she wearing the monitor?”
“Yes.”
“What did it show?”
“Nothing useful.”
I frowned.
“How can a monitor show nothing?”
“The device stopped transmitting twenty-three minutes before she collapsed.”
I stared at him.
“And nobody thought that was strange?”
“The manufacturer blamed a battery fault.”
“What company made it?”
Nathaniel’s face hardened.
“Reed Biomedical.”
His company.
The room went quiet.
I understood now.
If there had been a defect, or tampering, or anything that implicated Reed Biomedical, the scandal would have been enormous.
Nathaniel stood.
“I need the original device report.”
“Can you get it?”
“I own the company.”
“You also said not to trust the company technology department.”
He looked at me.
“Fair.”
For the first time since I had known him, Nathaniel Reed seemed unsure whom his money could buy without also buying silence.
He called Dr. Helen Park, Evelyn’s former cardiologist.
Not from the house phone.
From a private cell I had never seen before.
She answered after midnight.
When Nathaniel explained the recording, she went quiet.
Then she said, “I wondered when you would find out.”
Nathaniel gripped the phone.
“Find out what?”
“The monitor did not fail because of a battery.”
His face emptied.
“What?”
“I requested the hardware after Evelyn died. Reed Biomedical’s legal office blocked release.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did.”
Nathaniel stood.
“No.”
“I sent you three certified letters.”
He looked sick.
“I never received them.”
Dr. Park continued.
“The device registered a manual reset twelve minutes before transmission ended.”
My skin prickled.
“Manual reset?” I repeated.
Nathaniel put her on speaker.
Dr. Park explained.
Someone with physical access had entered a technician code and reset the monitor.
“That would have erased the alert history in real time,” she said.
“Could Evelyn have done it accidentally?”
“No.”
“Who knew the code?”
“Authorized Reed Biomedical service staff.”
Nathaniel sat down slowly.
His wife had been wearing a medical device produced by his company.
Someone had manually reset it the night she died.
And somebody had intercepted the doctor’s letters afterward.
Dr. Park’s voice softened.
“There’s something else.”
Nathaniel stared at the phone.
“What?”
“Evelyn called me the afternoon of the gala.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked what would happen if her monitor was disabled.”
Nathaniel closed his eyes.
“Why?”
“She said she no longer trusted the person managing her security.”
A sound came from the hall.
We both turned.
The study door was locked.
A shadow passed beneath it.
Nathaniel moved silently.
He opened the door.
No one.
Then I saw something on the carpet.
A folded piece of paper.
Nathaniel picked it up.
Typed in block letters:
STOP DIGGING INTO EVELYN’S DEATH.
Below it:
YOU HAVE TWO CHILDREN IN THIS HOUSE NOW.
My blood went cold.
Sophia was not his child.
But whoever wrote the note thought Nathaniel would understand exactly what mattered.
Nathaniel looked at me.
“I’m getting you out.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“This is not negotiable.”
“It is when my daughter is involved.”
“Clara—”
“If someone knows about Sophia, leaving the estate doesn’t make her invisible.”
He stopped.
I took the note from his hand.
“You need to find out who wrote this.”
Nathaniel stared at me for a long time.
Then he nodded.
“Together.”
May you like
That was the first moment we stopped being employer and employee in the mystery.
And became two parents trying to understand why a dead woman had hidden a warning inside a dance.
