Chapter 5 - THE KEY TO WAREHOUSE SEVENTEEN
“Natalia approved changes to the fire safety system after I signed the paperwork?”
Julian's voice carried through the hospital room.
Dunn enlarged the authorization history.
“Her event-management account approved the changes at 7:14 on Tuesday morning.”
I stared at the screen.
“Could someone else have used her account?”
“Possibly,” Dunn answered. “But someone with her credentials had to authorize the amendment.”
Julian reached for his telephone.
Then he stopped.
“No. I want to see her face when I ask.”
Natalia arrived at the hospital twenty minutes later.
She was still wearing her white engagement gown.
Her diamonds glittered beneath the fluorescent lights.
But the confident woman who had ordered security to drag me away now looked pale and exhausted.
“Julian, I've been trying to find out what happened to Helen.”
He turned the tablet toward her.
“Explain this.”
Natalia examined the screen.
Her expression changed.
“That's my account.”
“I know.”
“I didn't approve anything about disabling fire protection.”
“Then who did?”
She looked at Dunn.
“Mercer.”
Julian said nothing.
Natalia swallowed.
“He asked me for access to the event-management system. He said the photographers needed to coordinate the smoke effects with security.”
“You gave my security director your password?”
“He'd worked for your family for eleven years!”
“So had the woman you tried to have dragged out of the ballroom,” Julian replied.
Natalia looked at me.
For a moment, she appeared embarrassed.
Then her familiar defensiveness returned.
“Brooke made an enormous scene.”
“Brooke saved my mother.”
Natalia fell silent.
Julian stepped closer.
“Did you know about the chains?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “They were supposed to look elegant in the photographs. Nobody told me there was an actual danger.”
“I told you,” I said quietly.
She turned.
“What?”
“I told you the exits couldn't be locked. An hour before the party. And again when the smoke started.”
Natalia looked away.
Julian stared at her.
“I don't know how to marry someone who hears a warning about people's lives and worries more about her photographs.”
Tears appeared in Natalia's eyes.
“I was trying to make everything perfect.”
“Then you forgot what perfection costs when other people are paying for it.”
She took a shaky breath.
“My father was counting on tonight.”
Julian frowned.
“Your father?”
“His company's been struggling. He needed the publicity from our engagement to restore confidence in his business. He said the family couldn't survive another scandal.”
Julian and I exchanged a glance.
Whitford Industrial Services.
The same company Daniel had accused of ignoring locked emergency exits.
“Another scandal?” Julian asked.
Natalia hesitated.
“What did he mean?”
“He wouldn't tell me.”
Julian handed the tablet back to Dunn.
“Until the police finish investigating, you will have no access to my security systems, my staff, or my mother.”
Natalia stared.
“Are you ending our engagement?”
“I'm deciding whether there was ever an honest one.”
She left without another word.
I should have felt satisfied.
Instead, I felt exhausted.
Because humiliating Natalia wouldn't bring Daniel home.
And I still had the brass key my husband had hidden inside our son's wooden train.
At dawn, Julian arranged for me to travel to Savannah with Dunn and a local investigator coordinating with the police.
He asked whether I wanted him there.
I almost said no.
Then I remembered the way he had carried his mother through the smoke.
“You can come,” I told him. “But don't ask me to trust you yet.”
“I won't.”
The old freight depot stood near the port, its brick walls faded by decades of salt air.
A clerk checked the number on my brass key.
“Seventeen,” she said. “Private storage locker. Registered under Daniel Sullivan.”
My chest tightened.
Daniel had rented it shortly before his death.
The investigator photographed the locker before allowing me to open it.
Inside was a small metal box.
I lifted the lid.
A familiar silver wristwatch lay on top.
Daniel's watch.
The one I'd given him for our fifth wedding anniversary.
He had stopped wearing it a few weeks before he died.
When I asked why, he said the clasp needed repairing.
Now I understood he'd hidden it here.
Beneath the watch were two folded photographs and several pages of handwritten notes.
One photograph showed the chained emergency exit at Warehouse Seventeen.
The second showed a row of workers waiting beside the locked loading-bay doors.
On the back, Daniel had written:
11:38 P.M. — NIGHT SHIFT STILL INSIDE.
My hands trembled.
Julian examined the photograph.
“That's eight minutes before the first fire alarm was recorded.”
Dunn leaned closer.
“The official report says the warehouse was nearly empty.”
I felt sick.
“Daniel wasn't exaggerating. He was documenting everything.”
The investigator carefully collected the photographs.
Then I noticed another picture underneath the notes.
It showed Helen Ashford seated at a polished conference table.
Beside her stood Victor Whitford.
And behind them was Matthew Mercer.
Helen was holding a pen above a document.
A date was printed on the photograph.
Three weeks after Daniel's funeral.
Julian stared at it.
“Why would my mother meet with Whitford and Mercer?”
I turned the photograph over.
Daniel hadn't written on this one.
Instead, someone had attached a photocopied summary of a corporate authorization.
The heading read:
WAREHOUSE SEVENTEEN — FINAL SAFETY RECORD DISPOSITION.
At the bottom was a handwritten signature.
Helen Ashford.
The investigator studied it.
“If this is authentic, Mrs. Ashford authorized the destruction of the original inspection files.”
I looked at Julian.
His face had gone pale.
For hours, we'd believed Helen was the only person trying to protect Daniel's evidence.
Now it appeared she might have helped destroy it.
I picked up my husband's watch.
Its silver face reflected the warehouse's cold morning light.
May you like
And I whispered the question nobody wanted to answer.
“Julian, did your mother help bury the truth about my husband's death?”
