By morning the guests had divided into people who said accident and people who lowered their voices before saying anything.
Cal carried coffee through both groups. He had slept for three hours, then woken with the ridiculous conviction that he had left a camera running. He checked the cases twice before remembering why he wanted to check the cases. Juno was asleep on top of her covers, one foot in a shoe. He let her sleep until the alarm on her phone did what he had failed to.
Now Pam wanted a photograph of her parents made to fit the screen without cutting off their heads. She had sent a picture of a picture, taken through glass with her own reflection in the middle. When Cal enlarged it, Pam's phone appeared between her mother's eyes.
“It's the only one with both of them,” she said.
“Have you got the print?”
“At home.”
“Someone who could photograph it flat?”
“At home isn't here.”
He put the coffee down and moved her phone reflection toward the edge of the frame. She watched him with a folded handkerchief held in both hands. Breakfast was being served on the other side of the room. Each time a plate touched a saucer, she flinched a little.
“I can make it smaller,” he said. “Have something around it.”
“Black?”
“Something warm.”
He took a pale color from the old photograph and filled the edges with it. Her parents came back into their own picture, with Pam still faintly visible, ghosting between them.
She sat down.
His phone rang. Quinn. He stepped away from the laptop with the coffee still on the table.
She wanted the original camera material, not another edit of the empty terrace. Then she asked about his visit to Lena's dressing room afterwards.
Cal looked through the glass door at Juno unpacking batteries.
“The portraits were at three,” he said.
“You spoke before that.”
“We had to arrange them.”
Quinn asked whether Felix had been mentioned. Cal could hear Pam behind him tapping the table with the end of her pen.
“No.”
“You had spoken to him, heard them discussing work, then gone to see her. Anything else about those conversations?”
“No.”
She asked him who could account for the retained files. He said Juno's name, and Quinn asked to speak to her.
“I can tell you what we—”
“I'd like her to tell me.”
He went through the glass door and handed the phone over. Juno took it with a question on her face. As she listened she put the camera down and opened the card wallet.
“Both slots,” she said. “We keep the pairs. Then two offloads. Silver drive and black drive.”
She turned a page of her little notebook and read out the labels for Friday's material. Cal knew which one contained Lena's hands. He watched her finger move past it without stopping.
“No, nothing's been cleared. I can give you the inventory. I haven't watched all the source.”
She listened again, then gave her own email and asked for the upload link there as well. She didn't look at Cal while she did it.
“I'll put the full-source task together. We have to get the ceremony cameras in first.”
When she handed the phone back, Quinn said the office needed the original files from the visit and the associated material, not just the views Cal had selected. He said he understood. She repeated the retention instruction to both of them. Juno nodded, then said yes aloud when she realized the detective couldn't see her.
The call ended. Juno kept the notebook open, making a list. Pam tapped the pen again on the other side of the glass. Cal went back to her.
She had opened a second photograph. Adrian, perhaps twelve, on a bicycle far too big for him. His feet barely touched the pedals.
“That one won't fill it either,” she said.
“It doesn't have to.”
“He wanted a bicycle with gears. We couldn't afford it. Our father found that in a garage, and Adrian wouldn't let anyone see it because it was a girl's bike.”
Cal adjusted the picture.
“Then he put tape over the pink. Carried a screwdriver everywhere. He'd meet a boy on a better bike and say he was fixing this one for his sister.”
She leaned forward to see the frame. Her mouth moved with the story, but no more words came. Cal waited until she sat back before asking what else she wanted included.
“Can I trust you?” she said.
He took his hands off the keyboard.
“With the pictures?”
“With something for him.”
The coffee had gone cold. He moved it away from the laptop as though he needed room.
“He thinks he's very good at people,” Pam said. “He is, in business. He knows what they want there. Outside it, if somebody tells him he looks tired, he thinks they love him.”
“He seems happy.”
“I can see that.”
She said it so sharply he looked at her. She loosened the handkerchief in her hands.
“I'm not trying to keep him alone. I was pleased. When they met, I was pleased.”
Across the room the niece from the portraits waved a piece of toast at her. Pam waved back without seeing what she was holding.
“Felix was here for her,” she said.
“I know.”
“He wasn't just a friend. I don't know whether Adrian understands what that means.”
“People have lives before.”
“They do. I've had one. You wouldn't know it from the way everyone talks to me.”
She had made the little speech before. Cal could hear where the listener was meant to apologize. He didn't. Pam looked back at the bicycle.
“You go into rooms I'm not invited into,” she said. “You can see what people are like before they have time to be ready.”
He waited.
“If there's something he should know, I would pay you for it. Not for making it up. For showing me.”
“Something like what?”
“Her with somebody. Talking about him. Anything that would make him stop and ask a question.”
He looked toward the glass door. Juno had gone back inside their little workroom. They were alone at the table, apart from the two dead people on the screen.
“How much?” he asked.
Pam blinked. Then she reached for her handbag, as if a check might have to come out of it now.
“Fifty thousand. Would that be enough?”
He could show her three seconds. He could let her go to Adrian with it. No Sunday proposal would be needed. His own name would be attached, and Lena would know what he'd done, but Pam was the first person to offer a route that led straight out of the wedding.
He put one hand on the trackpad and brought Adrian's bicycle back to the center.
“I'm making his film,” he said.
“So am I. Trying to.”
“You'd have to ask someone else.”
She stared at him, her hand still inside the bag. She took it out empty.
“Don't make him look foolish,” she said.
“I won't.”
He finished the bicycle picture and put it after the parents. She sat beside him until it was done. When she left she took his cold coffee with her by mistake.
Juno came back carrying the camera that would hold the rear ceremony view. Cal showed her the family pictures and told her Pam had approved the order.
“I've got the list for Quinn,” she said. “The link came to both. I'll start the source once we've checked the positions.”
She put the notebook beside the laptop, open to the labels, and picked the camera back up.
Adrian came in as she went out. He had one cuff unbuttoned. His father's repaired watch sat loosely on his wrist, a small plain face on a dark strap.
“My sister bother you?”
“Family pictures.”
Adrian looked at the laptop. Cal played the little sequence, and the man gave a startled laugh at the bicycle.
“She tell you it was hers? It wasn't. She never rode that thing.”
He leaned against the table and explained the back wheel, which had been out of true, and the way he'd learned to ride with his weight on one side. Halfway through he forgot the reason he had come in.
Cal didn't remind him.
At the end Adrian touched the small watch. “You got last night?”
“Yes.”
“Keep my sister in. The bit with the glass.”
“I will.”
Adrian nodded, pleased to have asked for something he understood. Then he looked toward the empty space beside the laptop.
“Did you get a coffee?”
“Had one.”
“Come on. I'll get you another.”
Cal went with him. Juno was standing in the passage with a man in a leaf-patterned jacket, the one Gideon had greeted. Rafi was holding a phone so close to her camera that she had to lean back to see his screen.
“The hand,” he was saying. “That little girl. That is exactly the feeling. Everyone is selling happy, but this is actually happy. I need that.”
“It's wedding footage,” Juno said.
“Of course. I'm not taking their wedding. The way you did it. You could do a whole launch like that.”
Cal stopped. Adrian kept going, then noticed and waited a few paces ahead.
“We can talk after the ceremony,” Juno said.
“I have a figure. You'll like the figure.”
“Who puts it out?”
Rafi named his company, then a collaboration with Gideon. He said Gideon could get people to look at anything if the first image was right. Juno lowered her camera so he could no longer speak to the lens by mistake.
“Who gets the film credit?”
“The company presents it. All the team gets thanked. Properly. This isn't some little job.”
He tried to show her another image on the phone. She stepped aside to let a porter pass, and Cal saw her face while Rafi was still looking at the screen. She was no longer smiling.
Adrian called Cal's name from the end of the passage. Cal lifted a hand and followed him to breakfast.