Chapter Twelve: The Night Before the Launch

Ethan expected Friday night to be quiet.
Instead, Carol knocked at his door at half past ten.
She wore sneakers and held her phone in both hands.
“Adrian sent somebody to empty the theater storage room,” she said.
“June thinks the numbered bottles are being moved.”
Ethan glanced at the dark street.
“How does June know?”
“Mateo saw the loading crew arrive.”
Ethan called Moreno and passed along the information without pretending to know what was happening inside.
Moreno thanked him.
“If there are issues with product representations or consumer payments, other agencies may need to review them,” he said.
“Please don’t try to intercept a vehicle.”
Ethan assured him he would not.
Carol lingered outside.
“I thought you’d want to stop them,

” she said.
“I do.”
“Then why aren’t you going?”
“Because you learned yesterday what happens when fear makes you break things.”
She absorbed the answer without arguing.
A moment later, Tessa called from the theater.
“The private patrons are arriving early,” she said.
“Adrian invited them to a midnight viewing of the collection.”
“Are you inside?”
“I’m with my grandfather in the public lobby.”
“Stay there,” Ethan said.
“I am staying here.”
Tessa sounded insulted that he had to ask.
Nina joined Ethan in his living room.
Together they called Elise Torres and the other patrons who had agreed to hear from them.
Elise listened while Ethan described the city inspection in plain language.
“Have you seen the official result?” she asked.
“Not the final report,” Ethan admitted.
“Then I’ll ask the city myself in the morning.

”
“That’s fair.”
“And I’ll ask Mr. Bell where he gets the water.”
She sounded steady.
“I paid enough to deserve a useful answer.”
At the theater, Adrian had arranged the supposedly rare numbered bottles in a semicircle.
Guests were told they would be given an exclusive chance to reserve the next production run.
Elise arrived with her unopened membership package and took a seat near the front.
She noticed that the bottles onstage bore the same numbers as the ones already in her kitchen.
When she asked a staff member why, the young man said he would check.
He did not return.
Elise called Ethan again.
“Either they’re reusing the numbers,” she said, “or there are fewer unique bottles than they told us.”
“Ask them to explain it in front of everyone,” Ethan replied.
“I intend to.”
The midnight preview began with a short film about the old waterworks.
Raymond watched from the public seating area.
He recognized a photograph of his father that Adrian had promised to remove.
This time the image was cropped so the worker could no longer be identified.
It made Raymond angrier than seeing his father’s face.
He had spent years preserving those photographs so the workers would be remembered as people.
Adrian had transformed them into anonymous scenery.
During a pause in the program, Elise stood.
“Mr. Bell,” she said, “why are the supposedly unique numbers on your stage the same as the ones in my shipment?”
Adrian smiled from the podium.
“We use a heritage sequence to organize the collection.”
“Your salesman told me each number identified an individual original bottle.”
“Perhaps there was a misunderstanding.”
Elise lifted the card from her package.
“He wrote that here.”
Two other patrons searched their bags.
One found the same number.
Another found a number that had supposedly been reserved decades before the company existed.
Adrian began explaining the difference between a historic designation and a commercial lot code.
Ethan, listening to Elise’s call afterward, could hear the irritation in her voice.
“He used an awful lot of words to say the numbers don’t mean what they said they meant.”
At one in the morning, the preview ended without a single new investment being announced.
Adrian asked the patrons to return Saturday for a fuller presentation.
Elise left with her package unopened.
Raymond walked home under the streetlights beside Tessa.
“You didn’t shout,” she told him.
“I wanted to,” he said.
“But that woman asked a better question than I could have.”
Tessa took his arm.
“Then we’ll ask another tomorrow.”