Chapter 3 - Arthur Bennett’s Last DesignThere was no literal key to the crystal crown.
At least not the gala crown.
Maya learned that ten minutes later when Marcus locked the dressing-room doors and Vanessa finally stopped pretending the words meant nothing.
“The crown key,” Vanessa said, “was Arthur’s name for a storage device.”
Maya stared at her.
“What storage device?”
“A small encrypted drive.”
“Containing what?”
Vanessa looked toward Chloe.
“Not here.”
Maya laughed in disbelief.
“Chloe stole my costume, entered it as her own, and apparently removed something Dad hid inside it. I think ‘not here’ expired about thirty minutes ago.”
Chloe’s face tightened.
“I didn’t remove anything.”
Maya turned.
“Who helped you take the wings?”
Chloe hesitated.
“Mom.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
Maya’s stomach sank.
“You knew the compartment was there.”
“No.”
“Then why did you help her steal them?”
Vanessa’s voice hardened. “They were in Bennett Atelier storage.”
“They were in my locked workroom.”
“An atelier owned by the estate.”
“I pay rent to the estate for that floor.”
“Maya—”
“No.”
Marcus quietly excused the attorneys to the adjoining room but remained himself.
Maya looked at him.
“You know what the crown key was.”
He hesitated.
“I know what Arthur told me.”
“When?”
“About two months before he died.”
Vanessa whispered, “Marcus.”
He ignored her.
“Arthur asked whether the Halloween gala’s costume archive could store a sealed design package if something happened to him.”
Maya felt cold.
“Why would something happen to him?”
“Your father had cancer.”
Maya’s breath caught.
Arthur Bennett’s pancreatic cancer had progressed quickly. He knew for months that he might not survive the year.
Marcus continued.
“He said there were documents he didn’t want contested until Maya had established herself independently.”
Vanessa’s jaw tightened.
“That is not what he told me.”
Marcus looked at her. “I’m telling Maya what he told me.”
Chloe sank onto a dressing chair.
“This is crazy.”
Maya looked at the empty compartment again.
“What was on the drive?”
Marcus said, “Arthur called it a design archive.”
Vanessa said, “It was financial.”
Both spoke at once.
Maya looked between them.
“Which?”
Neither answered.
That was when Maya understood the first real problem.
Her father had told different people different things.
Or someone was lying.
Probably both.
She turned to Chloe.
“Show me your bag.”
“What?”
“The bag you brought the wings in.”
“No.”
“If you didn’t take the drive, prove it.”
Chloe stood.
“You don’t get to search me.”
Maya stepped closer.
“I don’t want your phone. I don’t want your jewelry. I want whatever fell out of my costume when you removed it from my workshop.”
Chloe looked at Vanessa.
That reflexive glance again.
Maya saw it.
“So something did fall out.”
Chloe’s face betrayed her.
Vanessa said, “Maya, enough.”
“No. What fell out?”
Chloe exploded.
“A little black thing, okay?”
Silence.
Maya’s pulse jumped.
“What did you do with it?”
“I gave it to Mom.”
Every eye turned to Vanessa.
Her face emptied.
Maya whispered, “Where is it?”
Vanessa clasped her evening bag tighter.
Maya noticed.
“Open your bag.”
Vanessa stepped backward.
“Maya.”
“Open it.”
“This is not the place.”
Marcus moved toward the door.
“I think it may be exactly the place.”
Vanessa looked at him furiously.
“You have no standing in a family estate matter.”
“I have standing in a gala fraud matter and a duty to preserve evidence relevant to the competition.”
“This isn’t evidence.”
Maya’s voice became very quiet.
“Then show us.”
Vanessa held her gaze.
Then slowly opened the emerald clutch.
Lipstick.
Phone.
Keys.
A compact.
No drive.
Maya looked at Chloe.
Chloe looked genuinely confused.
“I gave it to her.”
Vanessa replied, “And I put it in my safe.”
“When?” Maya asked.
“Yesterday.”
“At home?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To protect it.”
“From whom?”
Vanessa did not answer.
Maya almost laughed.
There it was again.
Protection.
The word adults used when they wanted control without consent.
Marcus said, “I suggest everyone stop improvising and preserve the device exactly as found.”
Vanessa’s face tightened.
“Fine.”
Maya stepped closer.
“We’re going to the apartment.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Not tonight.”
“Tonight.”
Chloe stood abruptly.
“I’m not doing this.”
Maya turned. “Why?”
“Because this is supposed to be my night.”
The selfishness was so naked Maya almost admired it.
“Your night?”
“Yes. For once.”
Maya stared.
Chloe’s voice shook.
“Everything was always Maya. Maya’s scholarships. Maya’s designs. Maya working with Dad. Maya inheriting his eye, his taste, his stupid little studio rituals. Do you know how many times he looked at something I did and said, ‘That’s nice,’ then spent an hour talking to you about fabric grain?”
Maya’s anger shifted.
Not away.
But sideways.
Chloe continued.
“He loved you differently.”
Maya said quietly, “He was my father.”
“He raised me too!”
“Yes.”
“Then why did everything beautiful belong to you?”
Maya looked at the white wings.
“You could have asked me to make you something.”
“I didn’t want something made for me.”
Chloe’s eyes filled.
“I wanted to be the person who could make it.”
That was the first honest thing she had said all night.
Maya softened for half a second.
Then remembered the theft.
“So you stole my work and pretended it was yours.”
Chloe wiped at her face angrily.
“Yes.”
Vanessa looked horrified.
“Chloe.”
“What? We’re doing truth now, right?”
She laughed bitterly.
“I knew Maya would freak out. I thought if I won, nobody would care afterward. People remember the crown, not the construction notes.”
Marcus’s expression became deeply disappointed.
Chloe saw it and looked away.
Maya asked, “Did Vanessa tell you to steal them?”
Chloe hesitated.
Vanessa said sharply, “Do not answer that.”
Everyone froze.
Maya turned toward her stepmother.
And suddenly Chloe’s jealousy seemed like the smaller story.
“Why not?”
Vanessa realized too late what she had revealed.
Maya stepped closer.
“Why did you want those wings out of my workshop?”
Vanessa’s lips parted.
No answer came.
Marcus’s phone buzzed.
He checked the screen.
His expression changed.
“What?” Maya asked.
He looked at Vanessa.
“The gala’s intellectual-property attorney just found Arthur’s original competition deposit.”
Vanessa gripped the back of a chair.
Marcus continued.
“Six months before his death, Arthur prepaid an entry under Maya’s name.”
Maya stared.
“I never entered.”
“No,” Marcus said. “He did.”
Chloe whispered, “For tonight?”
“Yes.”
Marcus looked at Maya.
“And the entry title wasn’t White Angel.”
“What was it?”
Marcus turned the phone toward her.
On the archived form were three words:
THE BLACK HEIRESS.
Maya looked instinctively at the enormous dark wings she had built overnight.
The costume Arthur had apparently entered did not exist then.
Or at least Maya had never designed it.
Marcus scrolled lower.
Attached to the entry was a note from Arthur:
If Maya arrives in black, she has discovered enough to be ready. Give her the second envelope.
Maya stopped breathing.
Vanessa whispered, “No.”
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Marcus looked toward the golden stage outside.
“There are two envelopes.”
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