Chapter 3 - Fifty Thousand Dollars
Grace Clark hated unanswered calls.
Beatrice knew this because Daniel had hated them too.
By nine in the morning, Grace had called six times.
Beatrice finally answered on the seventh.
“Mom?”
“Hey, baby.”
“Where are you?”
“Recovering from the world's most expensive fender bender.”
“That's not funny.”
“It wasn't meant to be.”
“You sound weird.”
“I have stitches.”
Silence.
Then Grace's voice rose.
“Stitches?”
“Eight.”
“Mom!”
“I'm fine.”
“You said traffic accident.”
“It was.”
Technically.
Beatrice closed her eyes.
Across the room Dominic stood near the window pretending not to listen.
Grace continued.
“Should I come?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you have organic chemistry.”
“My mother got stitches.”
“And your mother paid too much tuition for you to fail organic chemistry.”
Another silence.
Softer this time.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you really okay?”
Beatrice looked toward Daniel's badge.
“No,” she almost said.
Instead she answered, “I will be.”
She ended the call before Grace could hear the lie.
Dominic waited.
“You're good at that.”
“At what?”
“Making people believe you're less scared than you are.”
“So are you.”
He accepted the point.
The folder remained between them.
Daniel's report.
Dominic sat down.
“Your husband contacted me eleven days before his death.”
“Why?”
“He was investigating financial transfers.”
“Bellini Freight.”
“Yes.”
Beatrice's stomach tightened.
“What did you tell him?”
“That Carmine had access to the company years earlier.”
“That's all?”
“No.”
Dominic looked at his hands.
“I told Daniel I believed somebody was using inactive businesses connected to my family to move money without my knowledge.”
Beatrice stared.
“You expect me to believe you were the victim?”
“No.”
The immediate answer surprised her.
Dominic continued.
“I expect you to understand that criminals steal from criminals too.”
“You admit what your organization was.”
“I've never lied to you about what people think I am.”
“That's not the same thing.”
“No.”
His willingness to concede made anger harder.
Beatrice hated that.
For four years, Dominic Rossi had existed in her mind as a shape.
A black silhouette.
The man behind Daniel's death.
The name printed again and again in Daniel's notes.
Rossi meeting.
Rossi warehouse.
Rossi financial routes.
Rossi connection uncertain.
She had built hatred from fragments because fragments were all grief had left her.
Now the silhouette had a voice.
And sometimes a sense of humor.
And a habit of drinking coffee without sugar after midnight.
And apparently a memory of Daniel Clark walking into his office eleven days before he died.
“What did Daniel want?”
“Proof.”
“Did you give it to him?”
Dominic looked away.
“No.”
Beatrice felt the answer like a slap.
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Say it.”
“He was police.”
“And you were protecting yourself.”
“Yes.”
“Daniel died eleven days later.”
“I know.”
“If you'd helped him—”
“I know.”
Her anger snapped.
“No, you don't.”
She pushed the blanket away.
Pain tore through her side.
She stood anyway.
Dominic moved.
“Sit down.”
“Don't tell me what to do.”
“You're bleeding through the dressing.”
“Then enjoy the symbolism.”
“Beatrice.”
“My daughter spent two years thinking her father was dirty.”
Dominic stopped.
Beatrice's voice shook now.
Not from weakness.
From everything she had swallowed for four years.
“Kids at school found the article. Someone printed it and taped it to her locker. ‘COP TOOK MOB MONEY.’ She came home and asked if her father had been lying to us.”
Dominic said nothing.
“The pension froze. Legal bills came. Daniel's life insurance company called his death potentially connected to undisclosed criminal activity. Fifty thousand dollars disappeared from the education account because I had to keep the house, hire attorneys, and fight people who had already decided Daniel was guilty because dead men don't sue.”
Her eyes burned.
“That is why I asked you for fifty thousand.”
Understanding moved across Dominic's face.
“You replaced Grace's fund.”
“Every dollar.”
“You put it away before you started working for me.”
“First morning.”
“So if you didn't come home—”
“She'd still have college.”
Dominic was silent.
Beatrice laughed bitterly.
“You all thought I was greedy.”
“I didn't.”
“You thought I was crazy.”
“That part remains under review.”
She almost smiled.
Almost.
Then she remembered Daniel.
“What happened at the meeting?”
Dominic leaned back.
“Your husband believed Carmine was moving money through Bellini Freight.”
“Why?”
“There were transfers into police accounts.”
Beatrice stiffened.
“Police?”
“Several.”
“Daniel's?”
“One.”
“That was the frame.”
“I believe so.”
“You believe so now.”
“Yes.”
“After he died.”
Dominic did not defend himself.
That infuriated her more.
“Daniel told me there was an internal leak,” Dominic continued. “Someone inside law enforcement was passing information to someone inside my organization.”
“Carmine.”
“Possibly.”
“You watched him point a gun at you.”
“I mean four years ago.”
Beatrice sat carefully.
“What did Daniel ask you?”
“To identify people with access to Bellini Freight records.”
“Did you?”
“I gave him three names.”
Her heart accelerated.
“Carmine?”
“No.”
She stared.
“Why not?”
“Because Carmine was my friend.”
The truth hung there.
Ugly precisely because it was simple.
Dominic looked toward the gray morning.
“We were fourteen when we met. His mother fed me when my father disappeared for weeks. My mother let Carmine sleep on our couch when his stepfather drank.”
“And that made him innocent?”
“It made me stupid.”
Beatrice heard something in his tone.
Not excuse.
Shame.
“I gave Daniel three accountants. Two managers. People I could imagine betraying me.”
“But not the man closest to you.”
“No.”
“And Daniel died.”
“Yes.”
Neither spoke for a long time.
Later that afternoon, Dominic brought Beatrice to a smaller office on the same floor.
Her doctor had ordered rest.
Beatrice had ordered everyone to stop using the word rest around her.
Dominic lost the argument.
On the desk lay photocopies of Daniel's remaining case files.
“How did you get these?”
“An attorney.”
“That quickly?”
Dominic looked at her.
“You do understand who I am.”
“Unfortunately.”
She sat.
They worked.
For hours.
Daniel's handwriting pulled Beatrice backward through time.
She remembered grocery lists written in the same crooked capital letters.
Birthday cards.
Notes stuck to the refrigerator.
BUY MILK.
LOVE YOU.
DON'T LET GRACE WATCH HORROR MOVIES WHEN I'M ON NIGHT SHIFT.
Now those same letters contained shell corporations and dates.
One phrase appeared repeatedly.
C.B.
Beatrice tapped it.
“Carmine Bellini.”
“Maybe.”
“What else?”
“Could be Charles Baines. City inspector.”
“Daniel wrote full names everywhere else.”
Dominic studied the page.
“Then probably Carmine.”
Another entry.
ROSSI DOESN'T KNOW.
Beatrice stopped breathing.
Dominic saw it.
“That could mean anything.”
“You don't believe that.”
“No.”
A second note:
MEET D.R. AGAIN AFTER THANKSGIVING.
Dominic leaned forward.
“There was never a second meeting.”
“Because Daniel died.”
“Yes.”
Beatrice closed the folder.
She suddenly could not look at the handwriting anymore.
Dominic poured two glasses of water.
He handed her one.
“Tell me about him.”
She frowned.
“Daniel.”
“Why?”
“Because he walked into my office four years ago and I treated him like a problem.”
Dominic sat opposite her.
“I'd like to know who the problem was.”
Beatrice stared at the water.
“He sang badly.”
Dominic waited.
“Terribly,” she added. “He believed knowing the words compensated for not knowing the melody.”
“What music?”
“Everything. Sinatra. Motown. Christmas songs in July.”
Dominic smiled.
“He made pancakes every Sunday. First one always burned. Every single Sunday for nineteen years.”
She swallowed.
“He used to put Grace's hair ties around his wrist because she lost them everywhere.”
Her voice broke.
She looked away.
Dominic said nothing.
That helped.
Eventually Beatrice whispered, “I hated you.”
“I assumed.”
“I pictured you ordering it.”
“I understand.”
“No, I don't think you do.”
She looked at him.
“I needed you to be simple.”
Dominic's expression changed.
“If you were simply evil, then Daniel's death made sense.”
“And now?”
“Now I don't know what makes sense.”
That evening, one of Dominic's men entered carrying a recovered evidence box from Daniel's old property record.
Inside were photographs, duplicate receipts, and one damaged digital recorder police had listed as nonfunctional.
Dominic's technician repaired it.
At 11:42 p.m., Beatrice and Dominic listened together.
Static.
Daniel's voice.
Then Dominic's, younger but unmistakable.
“You're asking me to betray my own people.”
Daniel answered.
“No. I'm asking you whether your people are betraying you.”
Silence on the recording.
Then Dominic said something Beatrice would replay in her mind for years.
“If you keep pulling at Bellini, Detective, don't assume the danger is coming from me.”
Daniel's voice sharpened.
“Are you warning me?”
“Yes.”
“About Carmine?”
A long pause.
Then Dominic:
“I'm warning you that Carmine isn't acting for me.”
The recording ended.
Beatrice stared at the dead machine.
For four years she had believed Daniel's notes pointed toward Dominic Rossi.
Now Daniel's own voice had left her a different question.
If Dominic had not ordered her husband's death, then who had been powerful enough to use Dominic's name, Carmine's company, and a police department's own records to bury the truth?
Dominic turned toward the final photograph in the evidence box.
His face went still.
Beatrice followed his gaze.
May you like
Standing beside Carmine in the picture was a man she recognized.
A man who had been inside Dominic's home every day since she'd started driving him.
