Chapter 2 - The Witness in the Lobby
Priya Nand, chair of Ridgewell's audit committee, was the first to reach the marble. She was followed by board chair Helena Voss and Jonah Bell, a retired judge whose silence made executives confess more than questions ever did. None of them looked at the coffee. They looked at Malcolm.
"Mr. Avery," Priya said, "who did you call?"
"You," Malcolm replied. "The number was on a letter you sent me eleven months ago."
Lydia gave a short, incredulous laugh. "This is absurd. A facilities employee has interrupted a board meeting over a spilled drink."
"The board meeting was not interrupted," Malcolm said. "It was moved."
Eli stood by the security desk, visibly wishing he could disappear. Lydia pointed toward him. "And that boy has made an allegation against me without evidence."
"He has made an observation," Jonah Bell said. "Evidence is what we collect next."
The board took the reception conference room, a glass-walled space overlooking the lobby. Malcolm was asked to sit. He remained standing until Eli was brought inside. The intern kept glancing at Lydia, whose phone lay face down on the table like a weapon waiting to be picked up.
"Tell us what you saw," Priya said.
Eli swallowed. "She walked around the wet floor to reach him. Then she poured the coffee after she was already standing in the clean section. She told him he was incompetent. She does that to people when she wants them to remember who can fire them."
Lydia's mouth tightened. "That is a reckless interpretation from a frightened child."
"I am frightened," Eli said. "That does not make me wrong."
Malcolm watched Priya write that sentence down. Then he placed a thin envelope on the table. It was sealed with a strip of yellowing tape and marked with a name Lydia had not heard spoken inside Ridgewell for nearly two years.
CLAIRE AVERY.
Malcolm's daughter had been Ridgewell's data-assurance manager. She had died in a highway collision eighteen months earlier, three days after sending an internal report about falsified safety records. The company had called the report incomplete. The police had called the collision accidental. Malcolm had never accepted either conclusion.
"I have been looking for someone who saw what happened to Claire's report," he said. "Eli Mercer was the first person in this building to tell the truth when telling the truth cost him something."
Lydia stared at the envelope. "You have been investigating me?"
"I have been investigating Ridgewell."
The door opened. A security director whispered something to Helena Voss, who looked toward the lobby and then back at Malcolm.
May you like
"Mr. Avery," she said, "why have you been working here?"
Malcolm pushed the envelope across the table. "Because the answer was always walking through those doors."
