Chapter 3 - The Inventory Log
Flora answered the question before Portia could change the subject.
“The vase was moved three days after Evelyn’s funeral.”
Portia’s head snapped toward her.
Flora passed Maisie back to me and crossed to a narrow service drawer built into the cabinet. She removed a leather-bound inventory book used whenever valuable objects were moved through the Mercer estate.
My mother had created the system years ago because our house was full of antiques with insurance schedules attached to them.
Flora opened the book.
“There.”
Blue-and-white Qing-revival vase. Ballroom west wall. Relocated from Evelyn Mercer’s sitting room.
The movement authorization had been entered electronically.
Requested by: P. Mercer.
Portia laughed once.
“I redecorated.”
“At three in the morning?” Flora asked.
A time stamp beneath the entry read 3:14 A.M.
Portia’s smile disappeared.
I remembered something then.
The morning after my mother’s funeral, Portia had told me she couldn’t sleep. She said grief had made the mansion feel suffocating, so she wandered downstairs and rearranged flowers.
She had never mentioned moving a thirty-thousand-dollar antique.
“Why that vase?”
“It didn’t belong upstairs.”
Flora turned another page.
“There was also an inspection request.”
Portia stared at her.
Flora showed me the line.
Bottom felt detached. Repair declined by household authority.
“Who declined it?”
Flora tapped the initials.
P.M.
My mother’s letter had answered one question: she had deliberately hidden information around the vase.
The inventory answered another: Portia had found enough to know the bottom had been disturbed.
But that created a worse problem.
“If you discovered the hiding place eight months ago,” I said, “why was the envelope still there?”
Portia’s eyes flickered.
Cedric noticed too.
She had either failed to find it—or had found something else.
Flora crouched near the shattered porcelain again. Beneath the decorative base was a torn circle of blue felt. Most of the adhesive was old, but one edge showed a cleaner rectangular mark.
Something besides the envelope had once been taped there.
Something had been removed.
Portia moved toward the door.
The bodyguards shifted.
I raised one hand.
“Don’t stop her.”
She looked surprised.
I wasn’t interested in physically holding my wife inside the ballroom. I had already made one unforgivable impulsive choice.
But as Portia passed me, I said, “Your car stays until security checks whether anything from this house is inside it.”
She stopped.
“You don’t own me.”
“No. But Cedric owns the house.”
My father finally spoke.
“And I’m authorizing the search of any Mercer property leaving my driveway.”
For the first time, Portia looked genuinely cornered.
Then she pulled out her phone.
“If you search my belongings,” she said, “I call the police and show them what Alonzo just did to my face.”
She had found the weapon I had handed her.
May you like
And she knew exactly how to use it.
📖 Portia’s threat made my own violence part of her defense, but the missing rectangle beneath the vase proved she had already taken something my mother hid. 👇
