He nodded to Lily first. “Morning, Lily.”
She held up her drawing. “This rose is tired, but it’s brave.”
“Best kind,” Daniel said.
Then he looked at me.
“We need to talk.”
Caldwell’s face remained composed, but his fingers stilled on his cuff.
I asked Lupita to stay with Lily for a few minutes, then followed Daniel into the corridor. He opened the folder just enough for me to see a stack of copied records.
“The billing adjustments are real,” he said quietly. “Small amounts moved across hundreds of accounts. Resort fees, minibar corrections, late checkout reversals. Most under twenty dollars.”
“Who authorized them?”
“Manager credentials.”
“Caldwell?”
“Sometimes. But there’s more.”
He handed me a photocopied page.
At first, I saw numbers. Dates. Approval codes. Then my eyes stopped on a name attached to a private corporate override.
S. Vance.
The corridor seemed to tilt.
“That isn’t possible,” I said.
“I know.”
Sarah had been gone three years. Her corporate access had been retired before the funeral. I had signed the paperwork myself because I could not bear to watch anyone else remove her from the system.
Daniel’s voice lowered. “Her credentials were used six times in the last eight months.”
I stared at the page until the letters blurred.
S. Vance.
Not stolen money now. Not only mistreated guests. Something colder and stranger had touched the one name in the company no one had any right to use.
“Who knew her credentials existed?” I asked.
“A limited group. You. Me. Legal. Old executive IT. And whoever had access to archived administrator profiles.”
From the break room came Lily’s faint laugh at something Lupita said.
I folded the page carefully.