Silas noticed the bed.
His expression changed.
“You live here.”
“That is not today’s subject.”
“You sold your apartment?”
“That is also not today’s subject.”
“When?”
“Silas.”
He placed his coffee on the desk.
“What would you like me to say?”
“The truth would be original.”
“I settled the immediate debts.”
“Why?”
“Because I could.”
“That is not a reason.”
“It is the reason men with money use most often.”
She set down her cup before anger made her crush it.
“I did not ask you to save the theater.”
“No.”
“I did not ask you to buy my debt.”
“No.”
“I did not ask you to return.”
Silas looked at her for a long moment.
“No,” he said. “You did not.”
The quiet answer disarmed her more effectively than any argument.
She turned toward the window.
The stage roof rose beyond the courtyard, patched with mismatched sheets of metal. Daniel had promised to repair it after his next contract. Daniel had promised many things.
Evelyn pressed her fingertips against the cold glass.
“My husband lied to me,” she said. “For almost two years.”
Silas remained silent.
“He told me the theater was recovering. He told me the loans were temporary. He forged my signature on one of the documents.”
Silas’s voice became dangerously calm. “Which document?”
“It doesn’t matter. He is dead.”
“It matters to me.”
“That is exactly the problem. Everything matters to you only when you can control it.”
He accepted the accusation without defending himself.
Evelyn continued.
“When Daniel died, people expected me to hate him. The creditors hated him. His business partners hated him. My lawyer hated him, and she had never met him.”
“Did you?”
“I tried.”
She turned.
“I found hotel receipts and assumed there had been another woman. Then I found payments to private investigators and thought he had been following me. After that came coded transfers, false invoices, accounts opened in my name.”
“Did the police investigate?”
“They said debt was not evidence of murder.”
Silas went still. “You believe he was murdered?”
“I don’t know what I believe. His car went through a barrier on a dry road. The police blamed speed. Daniel hated driving fast.”
“Was the vehicle examined?”
“Briefly.”
“By whom?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Because Rook Maritime Finance was unusually interested in acquiring this property.”
Evelyn remembered his warning at the jewelry shop.
“What is beneath the theater?”
His eyes narrowed.
“That is a specific question.”
“My husband became obsessed with the basement during his last months. He measured walls. He asked for the original building plans. Once, I found him removing bricks behind the boiler room.”
“What did he say?”
“That he was checking water damage.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I was busy trying to stop the leading actor from performing drunk.”
“May I see the basement?”
“No.”
“Evelyn.”
“No. You paid debts I did not ask you to pay. You placed me in your obligation without my consent. You do not get access to my building as a reward.”
Silas stepped closer.
“You owe me nothing.”
“People always owe men like you.”
“What do you think I am?”
The question hung between them.
Evelyn searched his face.
She remembered rumors from their youth. Cars arriving at midnight. Men lowering their voices when Silas’s father entered a room. A warehouse fire that killed three people and produced no arrests. The Vale name printed on hospitals, shipping containers, campaign donations, and sealed police reports.
“I think,” she said carefully, “that respectable businessmen do not make appraisers tremble.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I think you are dangerous.”
He did not deny it.
Her pulse quickened.
“Are you?” she asked.
“To you?”
“To anyone.”
“Yes.”
The honesty was worse than evasion.
Silas looked toward the bed behind the folding screen, then back at her.
“But the danger around this theater did not begin when I walked through the door.”
A crash sounded below them.
Evelyn flinched.
Silas moved before she did.
He crossed the office, opened the door, and descended the stairs with one hand beneath his coat.
Evelyn followed.
They found seventeen-year-old Milo Trent standing in the lobby beside a fallen wooden display.
Milo worked evenings as a stagehand in exchange for acting lessons. He had purple hair, three earrings, and the permanent expression of someone expecting adults to disappoint him.
“Sorry,” he said. “The back door was open.”
Evelyn stared. “I locked it.”
“It was open when I got here.”
Silas walked past him toward the rear corridor.
The lock had been forced.
In the costume workshop, drawers stood open. Fabric covered the floor. Two antique trunks had been overturned.
Evelyn ran to a cabinet containing the theater archives.
The door hung from one hinge.
“Anything missing?” Silas asked.