Daniel asked her not to confront the man. He called corporate security and asked them to preserve the building's entrance records and camera footage. Then he went directly to Victoria. He had barely finished explaining when her phone began to ring.
It was Richard. His voice carried clearly enough through the speaker that Daniel could recognize it from across the office. He congratulated Victoria on the routing improvements and asked whether she was planning to remove him from the next board session. He sounded offended rather than frightened, and the calmness of his tone made Daniel more uneasy.
"I expect you to participate," Victoria said. "But there are contract questions that must be resolved."
"Contract questions?" Richard repeated. "You mean the fishing expedition your new favorite has started because he doesn't understand how this business works."
"Daniel has followed our review procedures. If the invoices are legitimate, the review should be straightforward."
"You think your father would have let a man like him rummage through twenty-two years of agreements?"
Victoria's expression tightened. "My father signed the policy that allows independent audit review. You helped write it."
Richard was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Be careful about what you choose to disturb. Old decisions don't always survive being pulled into the light."
The call ended before Victoria could answer. Daniel looked at her. She was holding the phone very still, staring at a photograph on the bookshelf that showed Henry Grant standing beside the company's first truck.
"What do you think he meant by that?" Daniel asked.
"I don't know," she said. "And I'm tired of not knowing."
Her father's office had remained almost untouched since his death. Victoria had avoided going inside because it felt like trespassing into a conversation that could never be completed. His reading lamp stood beside a row of freight-industry books, and a glass paperweight sat over a faded map of the company's original routes. A cedar box of old photographs remained near the window. Richard had once told her that clearing the room would be disrespectful, and she had accepted the explanation because she did not want to deal with the alternative.
That evening she walked through the office door for the first time in months. Daniel remained in the hallway while she looked around. The air smelled faintly of old paper and furniture polish, exactly as it had when Henry was alive. Victoria touched the back of her father's chair, then opened the top desk drawer.
It was empty. Not merely tidied, but empty in a way that felt wrong. The labeled envelopes Henry had kept there were gone, as were the small index cards on which he wrote reminders to himself. A frame that had stood beside his computer lay facedown on a shelf. Victoria lifted it and found only the backing board; the photograph had been removed.
She called security. A manager arrived and confirmed that someone had used an authorized facilities badge to enter the room after office hours. The entry had been approved under a general maintenance authorization that should never have extended to confidential executive records. Victoria asked for the surveillance footage, then ordered the room secured until counsel could review what was missing.