Moonlight Turned Hollow

Chapter 2: What the Ledger Held

I got to the studio before Owen. The building had once been a boatmaker's workshop, long and narrow, with a glass wall facing a courtyard where rain collected in the seams of the old pavers. I turned on the lights and set the used wipe inside a paper evidence envelope from our project files. I didn't write the word evidence on it. I wrote October 6, garage, passenger door.

The date mattered. So did the fact that I'd found it. I knew what happened when people tried to turn uncertainty into certainty by rearranging the details in their heads. I'd built my career around noticing what the documents actually said.

Our firm, Vale & Hart, had been Owen's idea before it became mine. He designed homes and old buildings with an ease that clients mistook for magic. I handled everything that happened after a client said yes: retainers, invoices, payroll, change orders, permits, deadlines. We'd started with two desks and a printer that jammed whenever it rained. Now we had eleven employees, three major projects and a line of credit we'd nearly finished paying off.

Owen arrived at 8:20 carrying coffee. He set mine down beside my keyboard without asking how I took it. He'd memorized that before he memorized my birthday. "Morning."

"Morning."

"You still upset?"

"I'm working."

He lingered long enough to make it clear he wanted a different response. When I didn't give him one, he went to his office.

I started with the expenses. The first restaurant charge was $184.60. The second was $216.20. The third was a hotel room at the Harborlight Inn, charged to the Alder House travel account on a Friday when neither Owen nor Mara had been scheduled to visit the site.

I checked the meeting calendar. The entry said site walk, 4 p.m. There was no site report attached. The Alder House property manager had emailed the previous Monday to say the building would be closed for a private event that Friday.

I printed the expense entries. Then I checked our card statements. Each charge had Owen's card number. Nothing on the hotel bill identified who had stayed. No guest names, just the room and a late checkout.

My stomach went tight, but I kept going.

Mara's mileage reports showed several trips between our studio and the harbor district after 8 p.m. They could have been legitimate. The hotel charge wasn't proof of anything beyond a misleading expense code. The dinners might have been personal. The wipe might still have been hers, though Owen's explanation for why she'd been in his car had changed from "a couple of weeks ago" to "last week" during breakfast.

I exported the records and saved them in a restricted folder.

At 10:30, Owen and I met with our project architect, June, to review the Alder House schedule. Mara joined us by video from the site. The connection was grainy. I could see a strip of plaster wall behind her and the hard hat hanging from a chair.

"Owner's rep wants the phase-one budget before Friday," I said. "I need all outstanding vendor invoices by Wednesday."

"Already on it," Mara said. "Owen and I are reconciling the finish allowances."

I looked at Owen. "You're reconciling them?"

"We reviewed the finishes yesterday," he said. "She has the latest notes."

Mara leaned toward her camera. "I have a revised scope for the ballroom lighting. It should be ready this afternoon."

"That's not in the change-order log," I said.

"It's still under discussion."

"Then don't send it to the owners as a committed change."

A brief pause. Owen's gaze shifted to me. "Elise, we know how to handle a scope adjustment."

"I'm not questioning your design decisions. I'm saying the log is the record we all use."

Mara's video froze for a second. "Fine. I'll send the draft to you."

The meeting moved on. I kept my notes and asked the questions I always asked. When it ended, Owen closed his laptop.

"You made that unnecessarily tense," he said.

"I asked for an invoice."

"You challenged Mara in front of everyone."

"I asked about an unlogged change."

"You could have asked me afterward."

"And then the record would still be missing."

He looked at me with the same expression he'd worn in the garage. Calm, almost patient. "You're letting last night spill into work."

"I'm trying to keep personal explanations from being charged to a client."

His expression hardened. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Then give me the documentation."

He left before I could answer.

At 12:15, the revised scope appeared in my inbox, copied to Owen. The draft included $18,400 for a lighting package from a vendor I'd never seen on the project. The invoice address belonged to an office suite two blocks from the restaurant where Owen had charged the three dinners.

I called the vendor. The person who answered said they had no contract with us.

When I told Owen, he said the number was an estimate, not a bill. He also said the address was a temporary studio Mara used for samples.

That could be true. I recorded his explanation in the project log.

I didn't tell him I'd saved the expense reports.