Chapter 8 - THE WAITRESS WHO REFUSED TO RUN
Salvatore left the church before police arrived.
Not because I allowed it.
Because he had prepared better.
Thomas triggered the fire alarm.
The basement filled with smoke from a harmless theatrical canister.
By the time visibility returned, Salvatore and his men were gone.
But he had achieved what he wanted.
He had destabilized us.
Elena sat on the church steps.
“My mother was murdered.”
“We don’t know that.”
“You heard him.”
“I heard Salvatore Moretti say it.”
“You think he lied?”
“I think he lies even when truth would be easier.”
Father Michael joined us.
“Maria’s illness was real.”
“You knew?”
“I visited her.”
“She had lymphoma?”
“Yes.”
“So Salvatore lied.”
Father Michael hesitated.
“But her death came unexpectedly.”
I looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
“She had responded well to treatment.”
I remembered.
My mother had improved.
Then suddenly declined.
Doctors called it infection.
Complications.
We had never questioned it.
Why would we?
Elena looked at me.
“We investigate.”
“No.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“No?”
“You have been threatened twice.”
“So have you.”
“I’m accustomed to it.”
“That might be the dumbest thing you’ve said.”
“Elena.”
“No.”
She stood.
“You found me three days ago. You don’t get to find me and immediately put me on a shelf where nothing can happen.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“And everyone who said that ruined my life.”
That stopped me.
Vittorio.
Rosa.
Everyone had justified secrecy with protection.
I was repeating it.
I hated that realization.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“To help.”
“Then you help.”
She blinked.
“That easy?”
“No.”
I handed her a security phone.
“You answer this.”
“A phone?”
“You said you wanted to help.”
She looked offended.
Marco laughed.
I continued.
“It has every document we’ve collected. Read everything. Find inconsistencies.”
“Why me?”
“Because you lived with Rosa.”
That mattered.
Rosa had built the puzzle around Elena.
The rest of us were outsiders.
Elena spent the next ten hours reading.
She noticed what we missed.
Every letter Rosa wrote contained references to moon phases.
Every strange birthday book corresponded to a saint’s feast day.
Every address they lived at contained a repeated number.
The same number from my mother’s deposit box key.
“What happened on March seventeenth?” Elena asked.
I searched my memory.
Nothing.
Father Michael knew.
“It was Elena’s baptism.”
The church record showed March 17.
St. Agnes.
We checked baptism photographs.
One showed my mother holding Elena.
Behind her stood Rosa.
In Rosa’s hand was a green notebook.
The ledger.
Elena enlarged the image.
“There.”
A symbol was embossed on the cover.
A crescent moon.
“Where would she hide something related to my baptism?”
Father Michael looked toward the sanctuary.
“The baptismal font.”
Inside the stone base, beneath a removable brass panel, we found a sealed plastic package.
The ledger.
Rosa’s handwriting filled hundreds of pages.
Payments.
Dates.
Names.
Warehouse twelve.
The crash.
Vittorio.
Salvatore.
Thomas.
Everything.
Then the final thirty pages changed.
They documented my mother’s medical care.
Names of doctors.
Medication changes.
One physician appeared repeatedly.
Dr. Harold Ames.
I remembered him.
My mother’s oncologist.
Rosa had written:
Ames received $500,000 through Moretti Medical Holdings three days before Maria’s sudden infection.
Elena looked at me.
“Salvatore told the truth.”
“Maybe.”
Rosa had not proven murder.
She had proven payment.
We needed more.
Marco located Ames.
Retired.
Florida.
Before we could contact him, Elena’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
She looked at me.
I nodded.
She answered on speaker.
“Hello?”
A man’s voice.
“Ms. Rossi?”
“Yes.”
“This is Dr. Harold Ames.”
We stared at each other.
“How did you get this number?”
“Someone told me you found Rosa’s ledger.”
“Who?”
“A man who wants me dead.”
I took the phone.
“This is Dante Valenti.”
Ames breathed shakily.
“I know.”
“What happened to my mother?”
Silence.
Then:
“I was paid to alter her treatment.”
Elena covered her mouth.
“Did you kill her?”
“No.”
“What did you do?”
“I changed a dosage.”
“Why?”
“Moretti had evidence of financial crimes I committed.”
“You took money?”
“Yes.”
“And you changed medication.”
“Yes.”
“Did it cause her death?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I swear to you, I was told it would make her too weak to testify before a grand jury.”
A grand jury.
I had never known my mother planned to testify.
Against Moretti.
Ames continued.
“She developed an infection days later. She died. I spent twenty years telling myself the infection would have happened anyway.”
“You knew better.”
“Yes.”
Elena asked quietly, “Why call now?”
“Because Thomas Keane came to my home yesterday.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did he want?”
“The medical records I kept.”
“Do you still have them?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
Before he answered, we heard glass break.
Ames gasped.
The call dropped.
Marco was already moving.
“Trace.”
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
“Got him.”
A Florida address.
I called local law enforcement and federal contacts.
Elena grabbed her coat.
“No.”
She glared.
“You said no shelf.”
“This is different.”
“How?”
“Someone may be breaking into a man’s house right now.”
“Exactly.”
“We are in New York.”
“Then get the jet.”
I stared.
She stared back.
Marco tried not to smile.
Three hours later, we were in Florida.
Police had reached Ames alive.
Thomas had fled.
Ames handed us the medical files.
The altered dosage was documented.
So was Moretti’s payment.
It was enough to reopen the investigation into my mother’s death.
Ames agreed to testify.
As we left the hospital where he was being examined, Elena stopped.
“You know what’s strange?”
“What?”
“Three days ago I was worried about my electricity bill.”
“I can pay—”
“Don’t.”
I stopped.
She smiled.
“I knew you were going to say that.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You absolutely were.”
“Fine.”
She looked toward the parking lot.
“Dante?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want your employees treating me like royalty.”
“They won’t.”
“I don’t want a new apartment.”
“Understood.”
“I want one thing.”
“What?”
“When this is over, I want to see where Mom is buried.”
Mom.
Not your mother.
Not Maria.
Mom.
My throat tightened.
“I’ll take you.”
She nodded.
Then we heard the explosion.
Ames’s car erupted in flame fifty yards away.
He was not inside.
Nobody was hurt.
But taped to a nearby windshield was a note.
For Dante.
Marco opened it carefully.
Three words.
STOP DIGGING, BROTHER.
Elena stared.
“Brother?”
I looked at the handwriting.
It was not Salvatore’s.
It was not Vittorio’s.
And I suddenly remembered something my father once told me when I was sixteen.
A mistake he made before marrying my mother.
A woman in Sicily.
A child he had never met.
I had dismissed it as an old man’s confession.
May you like
Now someone was calling me brother.
And apparently he wanted the truth buried.
