The first piece of compelling evidence came from the destruction of the diffusion system. Dennis found a gap in the security footage from a specific camera overlooking the studio entrance – a brief, almost imperceptible glitch that lasted precisely twenty minutes. 

Too convenient to be accidental. And just before that glitch, the footage showed Joyce entering the corridor, carrying a large, opaque bag, her face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat, a detail she rarely wore. 

She exited the same corridor just after the footage resumed, the bag no longer visible. When questioned by Dennis (under the guise of a general security review), Joyce had claimed she was in a meeting with Dr. Thorne at that exact time, an alibi that Thorne herself, when subtly prompted by Dennis, couldn’t definitively confirm, only recalling a “brief, informal chat” much earlier in the day.

Cheryl’s blood ran cold as she reviewed the grainy images. The hat, the bag, the timing – it all clicked into place with a sickening thud. Joyce hadn’t just been present; she had been actively involved.

Next, they focused on the earlier incidents. The ruined materials, the broken equipment. 

Dennis’s meticulous cross-referencing revealed a pattern. Joyce had made “impromptu visits” to Cheryl’s studio or the adjacent storage areas on at least three separate occasions, each coinciding with a reported “accident.” 

Her alibis for these times were consistently vague – “running errands,” “catching up on emails,” “a quick walk around the grounds.” None of them held up to scrutiny when Dennis subtly probed. 

One staff member, a junior technician, recalled seeing Joyce near Cheryl’s workbench just before a batch of rare botanical extracts was found contaminated. The technician had thought nothing of it at the time, assuming Joyce was simply admiring the work. 

Now, the memory was chilling.

Cheryl felt a knot tighten in her stomach. It wasn’t just the physical damage; it was the calculated, insidious nature of it all. 

Joyce hadn’t just wanted to disrupt; she wanted to dismantle Cheryl’s confidence, to make her doubt her own abilities, to isolate her. The psychological warfare was far more damaging than any broken equipment.

The most damning evidence, however, came from a small, almost invisible detail. When the custom scent formulas were altered, causing a batch of “Stellar Nursery” perfume to turn acrid, Cheryl had initially blamed herself, thinking she’d made a mistake in transcription. 

But Dennis, reviewing the digital backups, found a subtle timestamp discrepancy. The original file had been accessed and modified, not by Cheryl, but by an unfamiliar login, one that had only been used once, from a guest account that Joyce had been granted temporary access to weeks prior for a “consultation” with Louis. 

The modification had been made late at night, when Cheryl was long gone, and the guest account had been deactivated the following morning.