Chapter 2
Nobody moved.
Silas Pruitt stood with the second device flat on his open palm.
Bernadette Stroud's hand stayed pressed to her mouth.
The auctioneer's patter had stopped somewhere behind them.
A hundred people, and nobody reached for a phone.
"Put that away," Bernadette said.
Her voice had lost its shine.
"That's a private recording. You have no right."
"And she's still the thief," she said, pointing at Della.
Silas didn't answer her.
He laid the device against the small counter monitor.
The screen blinked once and filled.
A gray corridor. A steel door. One camera high in the corner.
And Bernadette Stroud, in ivory, at the foundation safe.
The whole ballroom leaned in.
Her own hands worked the lock.
A velvet tray came out - a brooch, a bracelet, a bride's thin chain.
Her hands slid them into a cloth bag.
Then other jewelry came out of another pocket.
Pale. Dull. Flat in the light.
She traded one for the other, piece by piece, and closed the safe.
Nobody breathed.
"Turn it off," Bernadette said.
"Stop it. That isn't -"
"The one in my tote was never hers," Della said.
She hadn't moved from behind the counter.
"Look at her ears."
The room looked.
Bernadette was still wearing a full pair of sapphires.
"She has both of hers," Della said, very quietly.
"So the one she put in my bag isn't hers to lose."
The gasp came from the back tables now.
Silas picked the planted earring off the counter.
He turned it under the chandelier.
The stone sat dead in its setting, dull as wax.
He tapped it once against the brass rail.
A flat click.
"Paste," he said.
A woman near the front put a hand to her throat.
Silas held out his palm toward the clutch under Bernadette's arm.
"The real ones, Ms. Stroud."
"That's absurd," she said.
Her fingers curled around the beaded bag anyway.
A small gray man stood up from the second row.
He had a folder under his arm.
"Ms. Stroud," he said. "Our jeweler appraised those stones in April."
"The piece on the counter weighs nothing. Open the bag."
Bernadette opened it.
Two deep blue stones lay on a folded program, bright as water.
Silas set them beside the fake.
The difference was the room's silence.
Then the mask came off.
Under it was something harder, and afraid.
"I didn't -" she started.
"Eleven years," the auditor said.
"Eleven years she has run this auction."
He opened the folder.
"Forty-one pieces donated last spring. Nineteen missing from the vault."
"Every one of them replaced with a replica."
Bernadette said nothing.
"She needed a thief," Silas said, "before Monday's audit."
"So she made one."
"One who couldn't fight back."
"One who works nights for tuition."
Della looked at the earring on the counter.
Not anger.
Something quieter.
"You picked me," she said, "because I'm easy to throw away."
Bernadette looked at her then.
Really looked.
"You were convenient," she said, and stopped.
Silas picked up his keys.
"Board meeting. The foundation office. Now."
He turned to the fund's oldest trustee.
"Call the police from in there. Not from out here."
The room would get its scene in a small gray room instead.
That was how these things were done.
Board members stood when he passed.
Somewhere behind them, a donor said it again.
The hotel changed hands at midnight.
Silas waited at the counter for Della.
She hadn't picked up a single scattered ticket.
"You coming?" he said.
Della bent and gathered her tote off the floor.
Then she found the ticket that started everything - stamped 9:19.
"I never tore it," she said.
"Keep it," Silas said. "You'll want the date."
Down the corridor, past the safe, one small room waited.
Behind them, the ballroom door swung shut.