Chapter 5: Odile's Drawings

On the screen of Max's phone, Victoria stood in front of the Harbor Tower fence in a white suit with her hair blowing perfectly.

"I'm heartbroken to say this," she told the cameras. "My family's firm trusted Ms. Bishop with confidential Saxon plans. She left with them."

"I'll take it from here," I said, and hung up on Max.

Kieran was already holding my coat.

We took his car, because mine was a ten-year-old hatchback and his was in the alley with four hundred peonies' worth of goodwill.

We did not talk on the way.

His hands kept flexing on the wheel, and I looked out the window.

When we reached the site, the crowd along the fence had grown to thirty reporters.

Behind Victoria stood two Saxon lawyers in dark suits, holding a banker's box each.

She saw me get out of Kieran's car and did not even blink.

"Ellery," she said into the microphones, with a pretty catch in her voice. "I'm so sorry it's come to this."

A reporter turned and thrust a microphone at me.

"Ms. Bishop, did you take Saxon Design plans when you left?"

"No."

"Ms. Saxon says she has the originals."

"She has copies," I said. "She printed them from my files."

Victoria laughed gently.

"Darling, the Pier 9 plans are registered. They carry my seal."

"They carry your seal because you stamped them at three in the morning the night before the submission."

Her smile stayed. Her eyes didn't.

"Do you have proof of that?"

I had brought a cardboard tube.

I unrolled the sheet inside it on the hood of a news van.

It was a hand-drawn elevation, in black ink on yellowing trace paper, with a coffee ring in one corner.

At the bottom it said "E. Bishop," and a date, four years ago.

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