Chapter 5 - Unraveling the Conspiracy
Dr. Bell laughed nervously, adjusting his collar. “The child is delusional! She’s trying to protect her criminal mother!”
“The coin you planted in my mother’s locker was a ninth-century Umayyad dinar,” Lily said, her voice carrying easily through the silent room. “I know, because I saw it in the display case in room 3B this morning when I helped my mother clean the glass.”
She turned to the audience, pointing at the Codex behind the glass.
“But the Hadramawt Codex isn't from the Umayyad period,” Lily continued. “It was written in the eleventh century during the Sulayhid dynasty. If my mother were going to steal something from the vault, why would she steal a coin that has no connection to the collection you were working on today?”
Victor Vance stepped forward, his eyes narrowing to slitting grey points. “The child knows nothing about numismatics! This is absurd!”
“She knows more than you think, Mr. Vance,” Lily said, turning her gaze directly on him. “Because the coin wasn't taken from the vault tonight. It was taken three weeks ago by Dr. Bell’s assistant, who sold three matching dinars to a private dealer in Munich. The receipt for that wire transfer is on page forty-two of my grandfather’s notes—because my grandfather tracked those coins for ten years before he died!”
A wave of shocked murmurs rushed through the room.
Dr. Bell’s face went from pale to ghostly white. “That’s a lie! Henry Hart was a senile old soldier who kept garbage in his attic!”
“Then why is your signature on his pension reduction form from 1994?” Lily asked softly.
She pulled a yellowed piece of paper from her leather portfolio and held it high above her head so the news cameras at the back of the hall could zoom in on it.
“In 1994, when my grandfather was sick in the hospital, Dr. Martin Bell signed an affidavit claiming Henry Hart was mentally incompetent,” Lily said, her voice trembling slightly with an emotion she had kept buried for days. “He did it so he could seize fifty boxes of private translation journals from my grandfather’s home without paying his estate a single dollar.”
The lead police officer stopped. He looked at Dr. Bell, then back at the yellowed document in Lily’s hands.
“Is this true, Dr. Bell?” the officer asked, his voice losing its deferential tone.
“It’s a forgery!” Bell shrieked, his voice cracking. “Vance, tell them! Tell them this is a setup!”
Victor Vance didn't say a word. He slowly stepped back into the shadows of the crowd, his face completely expressionless, preparing to abandon his puppet before the fire reached him.
“Omar,” Sheikh Karim said calmly, rising from his seat. “Block the exits. No one leaves this hall—not Dr. Bell, not Mr. Vance, and not the board members who signed off on those transfer papers.”
Omar produced a small black radio from his coat. “Lock down the building. Perimeter teams, seal the gates.”
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Heavy metallic shutters crashed down over the main glass doors of the Preston Cultural Institute with a deafening rattle.
The trap had sprung.
