Chapter 9 - THE GUARDIAN VIVIAN TRIED TO FRAME.
Security footage showed Vivian’s assistant entering Naomi’s apartment with a duplicate key and staging the photograph.
The assistant confessed after learning Vivian planned to blame her as well.
Naomi was cleared of possessing the painting, but the false image exposed how easily a foster guardian with modest income could be discredited.
Vivian offered the names of donors involved in illegal placements in exchange for immunity.
Luis answered, “Truth is not a membership benefit you redeem when the doors close.”
The board converted control to an interim council of artists, museum workers, displaced tenants and affected families. Elsie’s inheritance remained with an independent trust, not Gabriel, Evelyn or Naomi.
The workers located the missing portrait inside a donor’s climate-controlled vault. Its sale had been scheduled for the following morning.
Then conservators examined the back of the canvas.
Behind the lining was a second child-placement ledger signed by Evelyn.
Elsie looked at her mother.
“You knew there were more children?”
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Evelyn whispered, “I helped place one of them before I understood what Vivian was doing.”
The child’s name was Naomi Bennett.
