Chapter 18
In the velvet pouch was a USB drive and a jeweler’s receipt.
Daniel took the receipt first.
“This is for the original earrings,” he said. “Purchased by your mother fourteen years ago. The jeweler retained a photograph of the set and its serial number.”
He turned the page.
“There’s a notation from six months ago. Someone requested access to the client file.”
“Who?”
“The request was made in person. The employee wrote down the name Julian Mercer.”
The room fell silent.
The earrings in Camilla’s possession were not my original pair. They were replicas, altered to match the photograph, with a copied version of my mother’s inscription engraved inside.
I looked at Priya. “Then where are the real ones?”
Daniel opened the USB file on his laptop. It contained scanned pages from the jeweler’s records and a short video from a security camera.
The image was grainy, but the person entering the store was unmistakable.
Julian.
He had carried an envelope and a leather folder. The store employee had accepted the copies of my identification and the old client file. Julian had signed the authorization using my name.
The original earrings had been left with the jeweler as collateral for a custom order. The replicas had been delivered to Bell Advisory Group’s mailbox, then passed to Camilla.
“What custom order?” I asked.
Daniel opened the final document.
“A set of matching earrings and a pendant,” he said. “The pendant was delivered to Bell Advisory Group three weeks later.”
“Where is it now?”
Priya found an inventory photograph attached to the file.
The pendant was shaped like a narrow compass, set with diamonds.
I recognized it immediately.
Julian had given it to me on our tenth anniversary.
He had told me he bought it at a small jeweler in Maine during a strategy retreat.
I remembered how touched I had been by the thoughtfulness of the gift.
The invoice showed that the pendant had been made from one of my mother’s original stones.
For a moment, I could not speak.
The betrayal was not only that he had taken something valuable. It was that he had taken something connected to my mother, turned it into a story about his devotion, and given it back to me as though the meaning belonged to him.
“Why?” I asked.
Daniel looked at the documents. “The jeweler’s notes say Bell Advisory Group requested a matched set to demonstrate access to private capital.”