She had been insulted.
Now the coat lay on the cutting table in the costume workshop.
Mara watched as Evelyn opened the lining with a seam ripper.
Silas stood near the door, keeping enough distance to suggest respect and little enough to intervene if danger appeared.
Inside the coat were narrow paper strips protected by waxed cloth.
Dates.
Shipping numbers.
Bank transfers.
Initials.
Daniel had hidden records in the seams.
“There may be more,” Evelyn said.
They searched every garment Daniel had worn during his final year.
A wool overcoat contained photographs of crates entering the theater basement.
A dinner jacket held copies of customs certificates.
Inside the hem of an old raincoat, they found a handwritten letter.
Evelyn recognized Daniel’s hurried script.
Evie,
I do not know whether I will have the courage to tell you this while I am alive.
I accepted work from Julian Rook because the theater was failing and I believed one contract could save it. He asked me to modify property surveys. Then invoices. Then customs declarations.
When I tried to stop, he showed me documents bearing your forged signature. He said you would be prosecuted for fraud if I refused him.
I told myself I was protecting you.
The truth is that I was protecting myself from losing your respect.
The tunnel was used to move stolen collections from museums, churches, and private homes. Rook controls the operation without Silas Vale’s knowledge. I began copying records after Rook ordered the theft of the Orlan icons. He intends to sell them through an auction network in Port Aurelia.
The final proof is not in the theater.
It is inside the sapphire.
Evelyn stopped reading.
Silas looked toward her.
“The brooch,” he said.
She turned on him. “You have it.”
“Yes.”
“Bring it here.”
“It is at Vale House.”
“Bring it here.”
Silas called his office.
Forty minutes later, a driver delivered a small black case.
Evelyn opened it.
Her grandmother’s sapphire rested on white velvet.
For a moment, every other object in the room vanished.
The brooch had belonged to four generations of women. Her grandmother wore it during the war. Her mother wore it on her wedding day. Evelyn wore it the night she met Silas at a winter performance of The Tempest.
She picked it up.
“The setting has always been loose,” she said.
Using a magnifying lamp, she examined the back.
A nearly invisible groove circled the metal beneath the clasp.
Mara handed her a thin blade.
Evelyn inserted it into the groove.
The rear plate opened.
Inside was no memory card, no paper, and no key.
Only a sequence of tiny engraved numbers.
Silas photographed them.
“Bank account?” Mara asked.
Evelyn shook her head. “Daniel used numbers as costume references. Production, act, scene, character.”
She copied the sequence onto paper.
“Fourteen. Two. Six. Thirty-one.”
Milo, who had been ordered to remain upstairs and had ignored the instruction, leaned through the doorway.
“Production fourteen is The Duchess of Malfi.”
Everyone looked at him.
Evelyn frowned. “How do you know that?”
“I digitized the archive last summer.”
“You digitized half the archive.”
“The interesting half.”
“Act two, scene six,” Evelyn murmured.
Milo opened a database on the workshop computer.
In the Lyric’s 1987 production, character thirty-one was listed as Attendant in Blue.
Evelyn remembered the costume.
It had been made from blue velvet and decorated with hundreds of glass beads. The dress was too fragile to rent and too expensive to discard. It remained boxed in the upper storage room.
They found it beneath a stack of artificial trees.
A label had been sewn into the collar.
ATTENDANT IN BLUE.
Evelyn laid the dress on a table.
The bodice felt unusually heavy.
She opened the side seam.
A brass key fell out.
Attached to it was a paper tag bearing the number 417.
“Train station locker,” Mara said.
Silas shook his head. “Too obvious.”
“Daniel was hiding evidence inside theatrical costumes.”
“To anyone except Evelyn, that was not obvious.”
Evelyn closed her hand around the key.
“We go together.”
Silas began, “You should remain—”
“No.”
He stopped.
“No private decisions,” she reminded him.
His expression shifted.
“Agreed.”
Locker 417 stood in the oldest section of Greyhaven Central Station.
Inside was a metal document case and a portable audio recorder.
Mara checked both for explosives before allowing Evelyn to touch them.
The document case contained original account books.
The recorder contained Daniel’s voice.
Evelyn pressed play.
For several seconds, only static filled the speaker.
Then Daniel spoke.
“My name is Daniel Hart. If this recording is found, Julian Rook has probably discovered what I did.”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
Daniel’s voice continued.