Chapter 4 - The Woman Who Brought Christmas Cookies
Celeste appeared at the front gate with a tin of Christmas cookies and a television crew.
Daniel watched the security feed in disbelief.
She wore a cream coat, her hair perfectly styled, and spoke softly to a reporter about a grieving stepmother being unfairly separated from a child she loved.
Lydia stood beside Daniel.
"Don't engage on camera. We've sent the evidence to investigators."
Celeste lifted the cookie tin toward the lens. "I just want Rosie to know I'm here."
Rosie, who had wandered into the hall, heard the voice through the monitor. She dropped her stuffed rabbit.
Daniel switched off the screen.
"She can't come in."
"Will she tell everybody I'm bad?"
"No."
"She tells people I make things up."
Daniel took her hands. "The truth isn't decided by who speaks loudest."
After the crew left, a delivery driver brought the cookies to the gate anyway. Mrs. O'Neill found a note beneath the tin's false bottom.
GIVE BACK WHAT EVELYN STOLE OR EVERYONE LEARNS WHAT HAPPENED AT THE WAREHOUSE.
Lydia photographed it. Officer Brooks collected it.
Daniel drove to Bell Street with Lydia and a licensed investigator named Marcus Reed. The old warehouse stood behind a chain-link fence. Someone had strung cheap Christmas lights across the boarded entrance. A sign advertised a holiday charity storage program.
Inside were rows of donated coats and toys. Volunteers worked near the front. Behind a locked partition, Marcus found filing cabinets, old payroll boxes, and a small office with a fresh coffee cup.
Someone still used the building.
The property manager, a nervous man named Ellis, said Gordon had instructed him to keep the back rooms closed.
"Why?"
"He said the files were part of a lawsuit."
Lydia obtained the appropriate access documents before they opened anything. In a cabinet they found pension records showing that Arthur Vale had flagged unauthorized transfers decades earlier.
The transfers had gone into a fund controlled by Daniel's father and Gordon.
Daniel sat down.
"My father blamed Arthur."
Lydia read a memo. "Arthur refused to approve the numbers. Your father signed the termination."
A second folder contained payments to a private investigator hired to follow Evelyn after her divorce.
"Who requested surveillance?" Daniel asked.
Lydia pointed to the signature.
Celeste Mercer.
Daniel stared at the page. "She wasn't even married to me when this began."
"Apparently she was already interested."
Back at the mansion, Rosie decorated a gingerbread house with Marianne. She put a red candy on the roof and whispered, "Mommy liked red."
Marianne touched her shoulder. "She loved you more than anything."
"Then why did she go away?"
Marianne's eyes filled. "She didn't choose to."
Rosie considered that.
"Celeste said Mommy left because I was too much trouble."
Marianne set down the icing bag.
"That was a cruel lie."
Rosie leaned against her aunt and cried without trying to hide it.
That night Daniel found a letter in the warehouse records, dated one month before Evelyn's death. Arthur had written it years earlier, but Evelyn had added a recent note.
If the Mercer pension records come out, Gordon will claim Arthur forged them. The missing proof is with the Christmas angel. Do not trust the woman who says she is protecting Rosie.
Daniel assumed the woman was Celeste.
Then Lydia called.
"The chapel star was removed by someone wearing cemetery staff clothing. The camera caught part of the face."
"Celeste?"
"No."
"Who?"
"June Alvarez."
Daniel looked at the phone in disbelief.
The woman who had rescued Rosie had taken the star.
He remembered June's trembling hands and the way she had said she was only doing the right thing.
He had believed her.
May you like
Now he needed to learn why she had hidden the one object Evelyn wanted him to find.
The holiday charity volunteers were furious when they learned their building had been used to conceal corporate records. Daniel met their coordinator, Mrs. Finch, beside a folding table stacked with winter boots. She told him that families were coming that afternoon and asked whether his investigation meant the distribution would be canceled. He looked at the waiting line outside and said it would not. He paid for an alternate location and helped load boxes while Lydia handled the legal work. An older volunteer recognized his surname and refused his help at first. Her husband had worked for Mercer Properties and lost retirement savings. Daniel listened while she described choosing between heating bills and Christmas gifts for her grandchildren. He did not ask her to forgive him. He carried the boxes she pointed to and stayed until the last family had received coats. On the way home, he passed a toy store window displaying a little red train. He nearly bought it for Rosie, then remembered that she already had a train she loved. He went inside anyway and purchased replacement felt wheels for the worn cars, along with a small tin of repair paint. That night he asked Rosie whether they could fix the engine together. She told him the chipped paint made it look brave. He put the tin away. It was the first time he had bought something for her and accepted that she did not want it.
