"We need to find Dr. Abbott right now," I said, moving toward the upper stairs. "He has the duplicate voucher in his faculty office. He can walk us straight through the main doors."
"Abbott’s phone went straight to voicemail an hour before we left the house," Dad said, catching my arm. His grip was calm, steadying the tremor in my wrist. "Look at the timing, Clara. If Abbott were on that floor right now, Victoria wouldn't have been standing at the stanchion alone. She knew what time we’d arrive. She had our names flagged."
I stared up the narrow, painted stairwell. From two floors above us came the muffled vibration of brass instruments warming up—the Saint Jude chamber ensemble playing the opening processional. Above that ceiling, three hundred people were sitting down to linen-draped tables, reading commemorative programs that had been printed that morning with my father’s name either buried in an addendum or completely erased.
"We don't leave," I said, gripping the leather-bound trust document against my ribs. "If we take the balcony stairs, we can reach the projection booth. The lighting technician is a junior in the environmental lab. He has the master key to the faculty annex where Abbott’s office is."
"And if Abbott isn't in his office?" Dad asked.
"Then I’m taking this file directly to Dean Sterling’s lectern before the first award is called," I answered, looking him dead in the eye. "You worked thirty-two years on those pipes so I could read these meters, Dad. I am not letting Harold Morrison buy our silence for the price of a second-hand folding chair."
Dad held my gaze for three seconds, his scarred face unreadable. Then the corner of his mouth twitched, and he nodded once toward the iron steps.
"Lead the way," he said. "Let's see what Abbott left in his desk."
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
Inside, Marcus Miller was seated on a high swivel stool, wearing an intercom headset over one ear while patching audio feeds into an eight-channel board. When the door hinges gave a low squeal, he jumped, his hand jerking toward a plastic master fader.
"Clara?" Marcus pulled the headset down to his neck, his eyes darting between my wet boots and Dad’s salt-crusted trousers. "What are you doing back here? The processional started six minutes ago. They called the junior symposium seats down on the main floor."
"Victoria Cross took my father’s donor clip at the front stanchion," I said, stepping past the dimmer rack so the door could swing shut behind us. "She told us to sit in the auxiliary balcony or leave through the service ramp."
Marcus stared at me, then looked at Dad’s face, taking in the split thumb and the dark gray collar of his church jacket. "Miss Cross was up here twenty minutes ago with Dean Sterling’s secretary. She handed me a revised program sheet for the lighting cues and told me to drop the title slide for the Vance Environmental Initiative."
My father moved forward a single step, his shoes silent on the rubber matting. "What did she tell you to put up instead, son?"
Marcus reached across the console, his fingers brushing a green paper folder marked Banquet AV Protocol—Final. He pulled out a laminated run-of-show schedule. Line item seven, which had listed my five-minute presentation on the canal basin runoff, had a thick blue grease-pencil line scored across the text. Stamped beside it in red ink was a new sequence title: The Morrison Agricultural Stewardship Endowment—Chair Keynote and Plaque Presentation.
"Sterling told the lighting crew that Dr. Abbott took an emergency medical leave this afternoon," Marcus said, keeping his voice beneath the rumble of the blower fans. "He said Harold Morrison was matching the state laboratory grant dollar-for-dollar, so the academy was consolidating the symposium chairs under the Morrison name to streamline the board certification."
"Abbott isn't on medical leave," I said, holding out the vellum document from Lansing. "He certified my runoffs at four o’clock on Tuesday. Harold Morrison’s son Julian failed the culvert assays because his father’s terminal discharged five times the legal threshold of organic solvent into the southern culvert between June and September. Julian tried to wipe the readings using regional averages, and Abbott refused to sign his binder."
Marcus looked down at the Lansing probate seal, his eyebrows pulling together. "Clara, if Abbott didn't take leave, why isn't he down there?"
"Because Abbott has the master ledger in his faculty office," Dad said calmly. "And whoever locked that front door knew Abbott wouldn't hand the lectern over to Harold Morrison without a public objection."