Chapter 10 June #2
Sienna crossed to the chair across from his desk and sat, pulling the sweater sleeves further over her hands as she settled. It was a nervous gesture. Like a child trying to soothe themselves, rubbing a blanket or a toy. June gave Sienna a warm smile.
“Do you want something to drink?” She asked.
“No, thank you,” Sienna declined the offer.
Her polite answer made June’s brows shoot up as she stared at the young woman in surprise, then worriedly, as this was definitely not the Sienna they had all become accustomed to.
“Are you okay, Sienna?” June asked, feeling a little alarmed. “Your father’s not here, he’s at a conference, but I’m sure if we call him, he’ll come.”
“No!” Sienna said abruptly, her eyes filling with fear. “Please, don’t call my father.”
“Okay,” June said, with an encouraging smile, her worry growing.
Holt sat back down. He and June exchanged a brief look across the desk.
“What can we do for you?” Holt asked her.
Sienna looked at her hands for a moment. Her fingertips were fidgeting with the edge of the sweater. She drew in a slow breath.
“I need to tell you something about the security footage from our property,” Sienna began.
“I’ve been going through it over the past two days.
The system that covers the front of the house and the inside of the garages.
” She paused. “A few days ago, I asked Rad to come out and help me find out who’d stolen my safe from my bedroom.
” She swallowed and continued fidgeting with the cuffs of her sweater. “I found footage of who took my safe.”
The room went very quiet.
“Who took it, Sienna?” Holt asked, watching her intently.
“Alfred,” Sienna answered.
“Alfred?” Holt and June said in astounded unison.
“Yes,” Sienna confirmed, and then backtracked.
“I mean no. I don’t know if Alfred was involved in stealing the safe, as the cameras were down at the time of the theft.
” She glanced from Holt to June. “But the footage on the security camera from the garage showed Alfred loading it into the trunk of my mother’s car. ”
“When was this footage taken?” Holt asked.
“The night the storm started,” Sienna replied.
June wrote the date and time on her notepad without comment.
Sienna looked at the desk for a moment. Fresh tears spilled, and she pressed her lips together, composing herself with visible effort.
“There’s more,” Sienna said.
“Go ahead,” Holt told her.
“My grandfather, my mother’s father, told me once when I went to visit him in prison.
..” Sienna stopped. She pulled the sleeves further over her hands.
“He told me my mother had a problem with stealing. That it started when she was young, before she married my father. My grandfather said she got into trouble with Alvin Frost when they were younger. That they got involved in something connected to Tony Vincent.” Her eyes met Holt’s briefly.
“You know, Harvey’s father.” She cleared her throat.
“Grandfather said it was his fault because he was never home. That he hadn’t seen what was happening until it was too late. ”
June kept her expression neutral and her pen moving steadily across the notepad.
“He told you all of this when you visited him?” Holt asked.
“Yes,” Sienna said. “He also wrote me a letter telling me about it before he died.” She reached into the pocket of her sweater and drew out an envelope and a flash drive.
She palmed the drive in one hand while looking at the envelope in the other hand for a while.
“This arrived for me by special delivery about a month after he passed away.”
She put it on the desk and pushed it toward Holt, who looked at the envelope without touching it, then pulled a pair of latex gloves from his desk drawer and put them on.
June leaned forward slightly.
The envelope bore the stamp and return marking of a correctional facility.
“Before you read it,” Sienna said quickly, “I need to tell you something else first.” She looked at the envelope. “It’s something I should have told Rad when he came to the house about the break-in.”
Holt and June both waited.
“When my safe went missing,” Sienna began, and June’s pen stilled on the page without any visible reaction, “I called Rad because I didn’t know what else to do.
” She looked at Holt steadily. “I told him I was keeping the safe for my father. That it was his things I was protecting during the divorce.” A long pause followed. “That wasn’t true.”
June set her pen down very carefully.
“I was keeping it for my mother,” Sienna admitted.
“She asked me to look after it years ago. She said it contained family heirlooms and jewelry she didn’t want declared as assets during the divorce proceedings.
” Sienna’s voice didn’t waver, but her fingers were white against the sweater hem.
“I lied to Rad because I was scared. My mother has a juvenile record for theft. I was worried that if anyone found out the safe had been stolen and that it contained jewelry, everyone would assume she’d taken it.
Or that I’d helped her.” She swallowed carefully.
“And I didn’t want to believe she’d actually done it. She’s still my mother.”
The room settled into silence for a moment.
“So when Rad asked who you were protecting the safe for,” June said carefully, “you told him it was your father’s in order to protect your mother.”
“Yes,” Sienna said. “I know it was wrong. I understand that now.”
June picked her pen back up. Something was sitting oddly at the back of her mind, that same nagging quality that had been there for days. Sienna’s explanation was logical and entirely believable. The feeling didn’t go away regardless. She noted it quietly and let it sit where it was.
“If the safe belonged to your mother,” June asked, keeping her tone light and conversational, “why would your mother steal it back from you?” Her brow furrowed. “Why not just ask you for it?”
Sienna looked at her. A flash of something crossed her face, there and gone too quickly to read clearly.
“I honestly don’t know,” Sienna said, with a small shake of her head. “Maybe she thought she could claim insurance on it.” She pulled out the small flash drive in her hand. She placed it carefully on the desk beside the envelope. “Here. You can see for yourself.”
Holt looked at the flash drive. “What’s on it?”
Sienna said. “The full security footage of Alfred loading the safe into her car. My mother standing there directing him. They loaded suitcases into the trunk, then both of them got into the car afterward and drove away.” Her eyes were dry now, the tears gone as quickly as they had come. “It’s all there.”
Holt picked up the envelope first. He opened it, pulled out the letter, and carefully unfolded the pages to read it in silence. June watched his face. Her brow lifted curiously when he sat back and gave a low whistle.
June stood up and walked to stand beside Holt so she could read it over his shoulder.
By the time you get this, I will be gone from this world.
You were the one person I never wanted to disappoint or fail, the way I failed your mother.
Thank you for always being the one to come and visit me when the rest of the family had turned their backs on me.
You once asked me why I never stopped your mother from doing what she did, and it was because it was my fault. I was never home. I was always trying to keep your mother and your grandmother in the comfort and style they were accustomed to, and so I did what I had to do.
By the time I realized what your mother was up to, it was already too late. That’s when I knew it was time to take control, and that’s when I made the deal with the Morrison family.
June frowned.
The sentence ended there, and the next page didn’t follow from it at all. There was a gap, a clear and deliberate gap, as though an entire page had been removed. The text that followed picked up mid-thought in a way that made no sense as a continuation of what had come before.
...carrying on a family tradition. Your great-grandfather was also a cat burglar, but he never got caught. He was known as the Night Raider.
June looked up at Holt as he stiffened, and his head shot up to look at Sienna.
“The Night Raider,” Holt said quietly. He set the pages carefully on the desk. “Sienna, why have you never brought this letter in before now?”
Sienna looked genuinely caught off guard by the question.
“I only found it… The letter today,” she replied.
“I went through my mother’s things this morning, looking for anything that might tell me where she’d gone.
I found it in her room. She must have intercepted it when it arrived and then hid it before I could get it.
” She swallowed nervously. “Today was the first day I saw it and that…” She closed her eyes for a brief moment as if battling with a decision.
“That’s when I decided to come to you and June. ”
June looked at Holt.
“Wait!” Holt said, his brow furrowing as he held up a hand. “Gone?” He looked at her questioningly. “What exactly do you mean by your mother’s gone?”
“My mother isn’t at the house,” Sienna said. “She wasn’t there again when I woke up this morning. Alfred is gone as well. I have no idea where either of them are.”
“When did you last see your mother or Alfred?” June asked.
“Just as the storm hit,” Sienna told them.
“I saw her car pulling out of the driveway. I assumed she was going somewhere before the conditions got too bad to drive.” Sienna’s hands stilled on the sweater hem for the first time since she’d sat down.
“I haven’t seen or heard from her since that moment.
” She glanced at the flash drive. “That’s how I got the flash drive.
I was wondering what she’d been doing in the garage for hours before she left.
So I went to check the security footage and found that. ”
Holt leaned forward in his chair. “Sienna, is there anything else you need to tell us? You have no idea where?” Holt asked.
“No,” Sienna said with a shake of her head.
“But right before I came here, I asked our housekeeper if she had any idea. She said no but she was worried about my mother.” Her eyes darted between Holt and June, who was still standing beside him.
“She had overheard my mother on the phone just before the storm hit.” She shifted nervously in her seat.
“She was speaking to Alvin. So I presume it was Alvin Frost. My mother and the man were always in the same place at the same time when he lived next door to us.” She gave a snort. “Now I know why.”
“Sienna, what did your housekeeper overhear?” Holt pushed her.
“My mother told him that the two of you were getting too close,” Sienna said.
“That you were going to figure out what she’d done.
” Her voice was quiet and completely steady.
“My housekeeper was worried about my mother. She’s always protected my mother.
” Her jaw tensed. “Anyway, my mother told Alvin she had to disappear. That she had to go now, before it was too late.”
The office was completely silent.
June’s mind flickered to their case boards as she slowly walked back to her chair and sat down.
Her mind clicked over. In her mind’s eye, she saw Victoria Morrison’s name in the suspects column exactly where it had been sitting since Holt had written it there.
June had been right. Victoria had been involved in all of this.
Yet as she picked up her pen to jot down some more notes that something that didn’t quite fit or sit right still nagged at the back of her mind.