Chapter 3 - THE SILK LINING
I opened my mouth to tell Luca where I had seen the watch, but before a single word left my lips, the library door swung open.
Judge Arthur Bellini walked in, carrying two glasses of amber brandy.
He stopped dead when he saw the open cardboard boxes and the blue velvet case in Luca’s hand.
For a fraction of a second, the older man’s eyes darted from the gold watch directly to me.
He remembered.
Two Tuesdays ago, I had accidentally knocked a stack of legal pads off the corner of Luca’s desk while setting down the silver tea tray.
Arthur’s briefcase had been sitting open on the leather chair beside it, and right on top of a manila folder had been that exact shattered gold watch.
He had slammed the briefcase shut so fast it nearly caught my fingers.
Now, standing in the quiet library, Judge Bellini cleared his throat and set the brandy glasses on a side table.
“Vanessa,” Arthur said, his voice deep and judicial, “I thought we agreed you were going to let those boxes go quietly to the parish drive.”
“He stopped the truck, Dad,” Vanessa said, gesturing toward Luca. “And he was about to humiliate me in front of thirty people over a ten-year-old’s cake. He needed to know the truth about the ghost he’s been worshipping for five years.”
Luca didn’t look at Arthur.
His eyes were still fixed on the initials engraved on the back of the gold case: TO M.B. — UNTIL THE LAST BREATH. — S.
“She told you to check the coat lining,” Arthur said softly, stepping closer to his daughter. “Did you check it, Luca?”
Luca handed the watch to Marco without a word and picked up Sarah’s camel-hair coat from the sixth box.
I felt Lily trembling against my hip.
“Daddy, don’t,” Lily whispered. “Vanessa is mean. She’s making it up.”
Luca’s hands were steady as he turned the heavy wool coat inside out.
Near the bottom hem, the cream silk lining had been clumsily restitched with white cotton thread that didn't match the original beige silk.
Luca slipped one finger behind the loose stitching and pulled.
The thread snapped.
A heavy cream envelope slid out from between the wool and the silk, landing on the Persian rug right between Luca’s polished shoes.
Vanessa didn’t look surprised.
She looked relieved.
Luca picked up the envelope and slid two long green paper tickets out from inside.
“Amtrak,” Luca read aloud, his voice hollow. “Chicago Union Station to Montreal. Overnight sleeper car. Dated November fourteenth, five years ago. Departs at midnight.”
November fourteenth was the night Sarah died.
The night her sedan had skidded through the guardrail on the curve near Oak Street Beach in the freezing rain at eleven-fifteen at night.
“Two tickets,” Vanessa said gently, stepping toward Luca and reaching for his arm again. “One under the name Matteo Bellini. The other under Sarah’s maiden name, Sarah Vance. Look at the time on the broken watch, Luca. Eleven-fourteen. Matteo died on the docks at eleven-fifteen, and Sarah crashed ten minutes later rushing toward the station.”
Luca stared at the green tickets.
For the first time since I had worked in this house, the man who ran half the shipping yards in Illinois looked completely broken.
He sat down heavily on the edge of the leather chesterfield sofa, holding the two train tickets between his fingers.
“She called me at ten o’clock that night,” Luca said to the floorboards. “I was in New York. She told me Lily had a slight fever and she was going to sleep in the nursery.”
“People lie when they’re desperate, Luca,” Arthur Bellini said, resting a heavy, paternal hand on Luca’s shoulder. “Matteo was my brother’s boy, and God knows he was reckless. When I found out after the funeral that they had been seeing each other, I buried it to spare you and Lily. When Vanessa stumbled across these things today, she called me in a panic. I told her to get rid of them before they broke your heart.”
It was a flawless story.
It explained why Vanessa had been so frantic to get the boxes out of the house.
It even made the cruel fiancée look like a devoted woman protecting her future husband from a devastating betrayal.
Except for one thing.
I looked down at the camel-hair coat lying across the open cardboard box.
Specifically, at the snapped white cotton thread hanging from the cream silk hem.
“Mr. Moretti,” I said quietly.
Judge Bellini’s head snapped toward me. “Girl, take the child upstairs. This is no place for staff.”
“Stay where you are, Claire,” Luca said, though he didn’t lift his head. “What is it?”
I let go of Lily’s hand just long enough to walk over to the sixth box and pick up the hem of Sarah’s coat.
“I mended the cuffs on Lily’s blue party dress in the laundry room at three o’clock this afternoon,” I said, holding up the dangling piece of white thread between my thumb and forefinger. “Wait right here. Don’t anybody touch this coat.”
“Claire, this is absurd,” Vanessa snapped. “What does a dress cuff have to do with—”
“Look closely at the thread, sir,” I said, kneeling beside Luca on the sofa and holding the coat hem right in front of his eyes. “It’s not regular cotton. It’s waxed quilting thread with a slight silver sheen. My mother gave me a spool of it from her sewing basket last week because it doesn't fray. There is only one spool of this thread in this entire mansion, and it’s sitting in my sewing kit in the laundry room.”
Luca’s eyes slowly focused on the thread.
Then he looked up at me.
“I steamed and brushed this coat in September before putting it in the attic cedar chest,” I continued, my voice shaking slightly as Judge Bellini glared holes through my back. “The lining wasn't torn then. Whoever sewed those train tickets inside this coat did it today—using the needle and thread from my laundry basket.”
Silence dropped over the library like a lead curtain.
Luca slowly stood up, the coat still in his hand.
He looked at the white thread, then at Vanessa’s red silk gown.
“You were in the basement laundry room at four o’clock,” I said, looking straight at Vanessa. “You told me you dropped an earring near the wine cellar.”
Vanessa’s face flushed crimson. “You are going to take the word of a twenty-dollar-an-hour maid over mine?”
Before Luca could answer, Lily knelt by the broken oak recipe box and picked up the piece of thin cedar wood that had formed the false bottom.
“Daddy,” Lily said, squinting at the underside of the wood. “There’s a picture taped under here.”
Vanessa lunged forward to snatch the wood from Lily’s hands, her red heels slipping on the rug.
Marco stepped in front of her like a brick wall, blocking her path as Luca took the cedar board from his daughter.
Taped to the underside of the false bottom—in a spot Vanessa had missed when she pried it open in the dark garage—was a faded Polaroid photograph and a small brass safe-deposit key.
Luca peeled the Polaroid off the wood.
It wasn't a picture of Sarah and Matteo Bellini.
It was a picture of Sarah standing outside St. Jude’s Hospital with a woman whose face was half-turned toward the camera.
May you like
And written in Sarah’s handwriting across the white border at the bottom were four words:
IF ARTHUR FINDS OUT.
