Chapter 6
Greg Sloane answered Daniel's call on the third ring and immediately said he had nothing to add to his police statement.
“I don't want you to add anything,” Daniel replied. “I need to know who maintains Ashford Hall's cameras.”
“Talk to the venue.”
“That's what I intend to do.”
Greg disconnected. Ten minutes later, Daniel received a text from Celeste's attorney asking him to stop contacting venue staff involved in the incident. Evelyn agreed that further direct contact with Greg would risk confusion and told Daniel to let investigators handle witnesses.
The venue's general manager, Leah Benton, was more cooperative. Evelyn sent a preservation notice requesting that original security files, access logs, device settings, maintenance tickets, and vendor backups be retained. Leah confirmed receipt and referred the matter to the venue's insurer and outside counsel. She would not send Daniel footage directly without authorization.
“But there's something you should understand,” she said during a conference call. “Our cameras aren't the same as our access-control system. A camera can stop recording while a door reader continues logging entries.”
“Would a staff member know that?” Maya asked.
“Greg would.”
Leah explained that Greg had been given access to a security console as director. He could request temporary camera maintenance, but such work ordinarily required a ticket and a supervisor's acknowledgment. The system logs showed a manual privacy setting applied to one corridor camera on gala night. A ticket had been entered afterward describing a faulty lens.
“When was afterward?” Evelyn asked.
“After the altercation, by my preliminary review,” Leah replied. “We're preserving the underlying record, not drawing conclusions before the audit.”
That was the first meaningful contradiction. Greg had told Detective Ruiz the corridor camera stopped working before guests arrived. Its technical log placed the manual change during the event, while the maintenance explanation appeared later. Evelyn forwarded the information to the detective rather than asking Leah to interpret a crime.
Maya stared at a diagram of Ashford Hall's service passages. A security door painted blue led from the public corridor to a coat-storage alcove. Beyond it was a narrow records closet used by outside caterers and event coordinators. It was not secret; it simply wasn't on the guest map.
“Lily said there were two doors,” Maya murmured.
Leah leaned closer to the diagram. “She was right. The records closet has a second exit behind the stage curtain.”
Daniel recalled Celeste glancing toward that curtain while Lily sobbed. He felt a familiar urge to confront her, to demand a confession from the person who had shared his house and slept beside him. Evelyn stopped him before he asked.
“You don't get useful answers by cornering someone who is already building a defense,” she said. “You protect the child and document the facts.”
The private foundation lawyer opened an independent investigation into the suspicious board packet, separate from the criminal inquiry into the gala. That separation mattered. The property records might reveal wrongdoing without proving that Celeste had physically harmed Lily, and the child's fear was not merely a tool to solve financial misconduct.
When Daniel told Maya he would step back from foundation decisions while the investigators worked, she studied him for a long time.
“You'd never have agreed to that last month.”
“Last month I thought having the final word meant keeping the family safe.”
“You kept the family quiet,” she said. “That's different.”
He accepted the correction.
Maya had learned to distrust the false choice between being a loving mother and being meticulous. She could hold Lily when she was frightened and also make copies of photographs, record appointments, and follow a lawyer's instructions. She made a separate file for the child's medical notes so those records would not become casual attachments to the foundation's finance inquiry. Daniel offered to pay for a private investigator. Maya declined. She preferred a structured inquiry with independent oversight to another person hired by her father and answerable to his impatience.
That evening, Lily handed Maya a new drawing: three stick figures next to a rectangle colored bright blue. One figure, made with thick black crayon, stood by the door. Another wore a navy triangle. The smallest held a yellow circle.
“What is the circle?” Maya asked.
“A key,” Lily answered. “The big man put it behind the music.”
Maya wrote the words down and sealed the picture beside the first. She knew not to march back to the venue hunting for hidden objects. Instead she gave the information to Detective Ruiz, who said investigators would determine whether any search was warranted.
The detective's next question surprised her.
“Did Lily ever mention a sound from inside that room?”
May you like
“She said something about music.”
Ruiz paused. “The hallway's door sensor records an audible chime every time the closet opens. According to the logs, it chimed twice at 8:40. Greg's written statement says nobody entered that area all evening.”
