“No.”
“Did you ask?”
Brennan paused.
“I asked if the dresses had been paid for.”
Camille nodded.
“That is a different question.”
He looked at his notes.
“Yes.”
“Did you ask whether I concealed merchandise?”
“No.”
“Did you ask whether I crossed a final point of sale?”
“No.”
“Whether security had observed a theft?”
“No.”
Brennan sat quietly.
Then he said, “I started with the assumption that the call probably represented an actual theft.”
Camille nodded.
“Yes.”
“And when you pushed back, I treated that like you were resisting the investigation.”
“Yes.”
He rubbed one hand over his jaw.
“That was a mistake.”
Camille did not smile.
There was nothing satisfying about an admission that came only after the room had already changed.
Brennan said these calls were usually straightforward: staff points somebody out, merchandise is identified, cameras confirm something, and officers resolve it. Camille answered that he had treated a familiar pattern as evidence before checking whether the pattern actually existed.
He nodded.
Then she asked one more question.
“When you saw my address, why did your tone change?”
Brennan looked uncomfortable.
“I don’t know.”
“You believed me more.”
He stared at the table.
“Probably.”
“My address was not evidence.”
“No.”
“My credit limit would not have been evidence.”
“No.”
“My owning the store is not evidence that I could not steal from it either.”
Brennan looked up.
“That’s true.”
Camille leaned back.
“The question was always whether there was evidence I stole something.”
He nodded.
“There wasn’t.”
Camille told him she intended to file a complaint.
He said he understood.
No shouting.
No threat.
No promise to get him fired.
She wanted a record.
That was enough for the night.
What Good Numbers Had Hidden
After Brennan left, Camille stood beside the conference-room window looking down over the flagship. From above, the store appeared perfect. Cream marble floors reflected warm light, muted music drifted beneath brass fixtures, and every garment sat exactly where visual-merchandising teams had planned it.
Julian stood behind her.
“How bad is this?”
Camille turned.
“You tell me.”
“Bad.”
“Why did Martin hesitate?”
Julian looked toward the sales floor.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t ask him yet.”