Chapter 4 - THE EMERALD BRACELET
The heavy gold and emerald bracelet caught the light, sparkling with a sickly green brilliance against Vanessa’s pale skin.
Vincent dropped the forged train ticket. His eyes locked onto the jewelry on his fiancée’s wrist.
“Take it off,” Vincent commanded. His voice wasn't a shout; it was a deadly, quiet whisper that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Vanessa scrambled backward, clutching her wrist against her chest. “Vincent, you bought this for me in Paris last year! Don't you remember?”
“I bought you a diamond tennis bracelet in Paris,” Vincent said, taking a slow, methodical step toward her. “That is my mother’s custom emerald cuff. My father had it made for her twentieth anniversary. When she died, the coroner said it was missing from her body. Take. It. Off.”
“No!” Vanessa shrieked, backing into the heavy wooden doors of the dining room. “You’re crazy! It’s mine!”
Before she could reach for the door handle, Vincent closed the distance between them. With terrifying speed, he grabbed her right arm, pinning her against the wood. Vanessa screamed, clawing at his hands, but he easily overpowered her. He unhooked the heavy gold clasp and ripped the bracelet from her wrist.
He shoved her away. Vanessa collapsed onto the floor, weeping in panic.
Vincent held the heavy gold cuff in his massive hands. He turned it over, his thumb tracing the inside of the band.
“There was an inscription,” Vincent muttered, examining the gold. “My father engraved a message inside.”
He squinted at the inner band. His brow furrowed.
“It’s hollow,” he whispered.
Vincent pressed his thumb hard against a small seam in the gold. With a sharp click, the inner plate of the bracelet slid open, revealing a tiny, hidden compartment.
Tucked tightly inside the gold casing was a small, folded piece of paper.
Vincent pulled it out with trembling fingers. He unfolded it.
I watched as his eyes scanned the tiny, hurried handwriting. He went perfectly still.
“Vincent?” I asked softly. “What does it say?”
He didn't answer. He just held the paper out to me.
I hesitated, then took it from his hand. As soon as my eyes hit the paper, all the air left my lungs.
It wasn't Eleanor’s handwriting.
It was my mother’s.
My mother, Maria Brooks, had been Eleanor’s private hospice nurse. She had cared for Eleanor during the final months of her life, right up until the night Eleanor supposedly passed away in her sleep from a sudden cardiac arrest.
Two weeks after Eleanor died, my mother was killed in a hit-and-run accident on her way home from the grocery store. The police never found the driver.
I stared at the familiar, looping cursive, my hands shaking so violently the paper rattled.
“If someone finds this, I am already dead,” my mother’s note began. “Eleanor didn't have a heart attack. She was poisoned. She found out Richard and a woman named Vanessa were draining the widow’s funds. She was going to the authorities in the morning. Vanessa came to the house tonight. I hid in the closet. I watched her force a liquid down Eleanor’s throat. I managed to slip this bracelet off Eleanor’s wrist before the paramedics arrived. I am hiding this note inside. I am mailing the key to my daughter.”
Tears blurred my vision. A sob ripped through my throat, echoing in the silent dining room.
The tragic accident I had mourned for fourteen months was a lie. My mother was murdered because she was a witness.
“She killed them,” I choked out, looking up from the note. I stared at Vanessa, who was cowering on the floor. “You murdered Eleanor. And then you hunted down my mother and ran her over in the street to keep her quiet!”
Vanessa’s face twisted into a mask of pure, desperate survival. She scrambled to her feet.
“She was a nosy, pathetic nurse!” Vanessa screamed, pointing at me. “She was going to ruin everything! My father died on those docks in 1998! The Moretti family paid off the inspectors and covered up the safety violations! You owed us that money! I was just taking back what was stolen from my family!”
“So you murdered my mother?!” I screamed back, stepping toward her with fists clenched.
“And I’ll murder you too!” Vanessa spat.
Before anyone could react, Vanessa reached under the heavy silk skirt of her gown and pulled a small, silver derringer pistol from an ankle holster.
She aimed it directly at my chest.
Screams erupted around the table. The investors dove to the floor. Florence grasped her chest, stumbling backward.
“Nobody move!” Vanessa shrieked, her hand shaking as she kept the gun pointed at me. “Vincent, order your men to back down, or I blow a hole through your maid’s heart!”
Vincent slowly raised his hands, signaling his security detail by the door to hold their fire.
“You aren't getting out of here, Vanessa,” Vincent said calmly, though his eyes were lethal.
“I already am,” Vanessa sneered. She backed toward the side door leading to the kitchen corridors. “I have the money from the funds. I have a jet waiting at O'Hare. And the only thing standing between me and sixty million dollars is a little brass key.”
She glared at me.
“Your mother wrote that she mailed the key to you, Anna,” Vanessa demanded. “Where is it? Give it to me right now.”
I stared down the barrel of the gun. My heart hammered against my ribs, but the fear was completely overshadowed by a blinding, righteous anger. This woman had killed my mother.
I reached into the deep pocket of my black maid’s apron.
“I didn't know what the key went to,” I said, my voice remarkably steady. “My mother mailed it to me in a blank envelope the day before she died.”
I pulled my hand out of my pocket.
Dangling from my fingers was a heavily tarnished silver rosary.
“A rosary?” Vanessa yelled. “I said give me the key!”
“The key is inside it,” I said.
I pressed my thumb against the back of the intricate silver crucifix. With a soft click, a hidden latch sprang open. The back of the cross swung wide, revealing a small, antique brass safety deposit key hidden inside the hollow chamber.
“Toss it to me!” Vanessa ordered.
I looked at the key. Then I looked at Vincent. He gave me an imperceptible nod.
I tossed the heavy silver rosary across the room.
May you like
But I didn't toss it to Vanessa.
I threw it as hard as I could toward the roaring fireplace on the opposite wall.
