Chapter 7 - THE COAT WITH BRASS BUTTONS
A cold draft seemed to sweep through the humid glass conservatory.
Damian stood up slowly, leaving Noah and Zoe huddled together on the brick floor in my arms. He took the heavy, water-stained navy pea coat from Marta's trembling hands.
I recognized that coat immediately from Noah's description at the dinner table: She had a dark blue coat with gold buttons, like a boat captain.
When Noah and Zoe's mother, Clara, had brought them to the St. Jude church shelter two years ago before she died of pneumonia, she had been wearing Marco's old harbor coat to keep warm.
Damian turned the heavy wool garment over under the amber work lamp.
Just below the left shoulder blade, the thick navy wool was sliced cleanly through by a four-inch blade. Around the tear, the dark lining was stiff and rusted with old, saltwater-faded blood.
"The coast guard told me Marco's engine failed in the November gale," Damian whispered, his fingers shaking as he touched the slit in the fabric. "They found his empty boat drifted against the breakwater and his other jacket floating near the pier. They said he was swept overboard."
"He never left the harbor slip, Mr. Valenti," Marta said quickly, glancing toward the dark glass panes of the greenhouse. "My late brother-in-law was Judge Cross's bailiff for fifteen years. Seven years ago, Marco found out Judge Cross was skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars from the juvenile court trust funds set up for orphaned wards of the state—using your father Lorenzo's old dockside shell companies to launder it."
My stomach lurched.
"Judge Cross lied to you in the foyer five minutes ago," I said, the realization hitting me like a blow. "He blamed your dead father Lorenzo because Lorenzo isn't alive to deny it! Marco wasn't hiding his kids from Lorenzo—he was hiding them from Judge Cross because Marco was about to turn the judge's embezzlement ledgers over to you!"
"Yes," Marta nodded rapidly. "Clara kept this coat after Marco escaped the dock that night. He bled to death two days later in a motel in Gary, Indiana, after making Clara swear to keep the children hidden until you returned from Rome. Before Clara died two years ago, she hid the bank ledger inside the lining of the coat."
Damian's hand slid inside the torn lining at the hem of the navy pea coat.
His fingers closed around an oilskin-wrapped notebook, no bigger than a passport, stitched into the wool with that same unmistakable triple fisherman's knot.
"Wait," I said, my heart racing as I pulled Noah and Zoe closer against my apron. "Marta, you said Judge Cross called the second man who was on the dock with him that night to come pick up Zoe before dinner ended. Who was the second man?"
Before Marta could answer, the heavy oak door leading from the conservatory back to the service corridor slammed shut.
The heavy brass deadbolt clicked into place from the outside.
I lunged for the door handle and rattled it. Locked solid.
Through the small wired-glass window in the upper half of the door, I didn't see Judge Cross.
I saw Chief of Security Paul Vance—the retired harbor precinct detective who had worked as the head of Damian's personal security detail for the past eight years. The man who had personally led the private investigation searching for Noah's missing sister for the last twenty-four months.
Wait.
That was why Damian's investigators had never found Zoe!
The man Damian was paying ten thousand dollars a month to find Noah's sister was the very man who had helped Judge Cross murder Marco on the docks—and he had been steering Damian's search away from every real lead for two years!
Through the small square of wired glass, Paul Vance looked straight at Damian. His grey suit jacket was unbuttoned, revealing the leather shoulder holster underneath. Standing pale and terrified behind him in the corridor were Judge Cross and Vivienne.
"Don't try the glass doors to the garden, Damian," Vance called through the thick oak door, his voice calm and professional. "My two men on the perimeter already chained the exterior storm grates for the night. Your guests think you took Noah upstairs to put him to bed after a tantrum, and the string quartet is playing Vivaldi in the parlor."
Damian didn't throw himself against the door like a madman.
He looked at Vance through the small pane of glass, his dark eyes steady and lethal.
"Eight years, Paul," Damian said evenly. "You sat at my table on Sundays. You taught Noah how to throw a baseball in the yard."
"And I would have kept doing it if Vivienne hadn't panicked over a fifty-cent piece of red string," Vance replied gruffly. "Arthur called me from the dinner table when he went to the men's room twenty minutes ago and told me you recognized Marco's knot. Hand the oilskin ledger through the mail slot at the bottom of the door, Damian."
"And if I hand it through?" Damian asked.
"Then I take Arthur, Vivienne, and the little girl out through the garage in the suburban," Vance said. "Once we're across the border in Montreal tomorrow night, I'll let the girl go at a bus station. You try to break the greenhouse glass before we're off the property, and nobody walks out of this corridor."
Behind Vance in the hallway, Vivienne grabbed the security chief's sleeve.
"Paul, wait! You said you were just going to get the ledger so my father wouldn't go to federal prison! You didn't say anything about taking the little girl as a hostage!"
Vance shoved Vivienne back against the corridor wall without looking at her. "Shut up, Vivienne. Your father's name is on the court trusts, and my badge number is on the harbor patrol log from the night Marco's boat drifted out. None of us are going to prison."
In my arms, eight-year-old Zoe was shaking like a leaf, her small fingers tangled in Noah's suit jacket.
"I'm not going back with them," she whispered fiercely against Noah's shoulder. "Noah, don't let them take me."
"I won't," Noah said, his jaw set just like Damian's as he stepped in front of his sister, even though he only came up to Damian's ribs.
Damian looked around the conservatory.
The exterior glass walls were reinforced hurricane panes bolted into steel frames, and the outer winter storm shutters were padlocked from the courtyard side. There were no phones in the laundry room, and Damian had left his cell phone on his desk before walking into his own engagement dinner.
"Give me thirty seconds to get the stitching out of the coat lining, Paul," Damian called toward the door, turning his back to the little window so Vance couldn't see his hands.
Damian looked directly at me.
"Natalie," he whispered rapidly, his voice barely audible over the hum of the greenhouse heaters. "You clean the basement and the pantry every day. Where does the old coal-chute ventilation shaft under the folding tables lead?"
My eyes widened as I looked at the cast-iron grate set into the brick wall behind the industrial dryers.
"It doesn't go outside," I whispered back. "It goes straight up behind the fireplace flue in the main dining room—right behind the head of the banquet table where the twenty-four guests are sitting!"
Damian's eyes flashed. He looked down at ten-year-old Noah.
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"Buddy, that shaft is fourteen inches wide. An adult can't fit past the damper, and the iron grate at the top is bolted from the dining room side—unless someone small reaches through the brass filigree with something sharp to pop the latch."
Damian reached into his pocket and pulled out the heavy steel kitchen scissors Vivienne had handed me at the dinner table to cut off Noah's bracelet.
