Chapter 7 - THE PANTRY WALL
Luca didn't wait for the elevator.
He took the marble stairs of Lake Shore Bank three at a time, dialing his house security chief Before we even burst out into the cold alley.
“Marco!” Luca barked into the phone as I scrambled into the passenger seat of the Mercedes and he gunned the engine out onto Michigan Avenue.
Only static and a faint, groaning breath came through the speaker.
“Boss…” Marco’s voice sounded thick and slurred over the line. “Back gate… the gas main in the mudroom… they pumped sleeping gas—”
The phone went dead as Marco’s body hit the floor.
Luca pressed the accelerator to the floorboard.
The speedometer climbed past ninety as we tore north up Lake Shore Drive, the exact stretch of black water and twisting guardrails where Sarah’s car had been forced off the road five years ago.
“Call Dante’s cell,” Luca ordered, tossing me a second encrypted phone from the center console. “Then call the landline in Lily’s bedroom.”
My fingers shook as I dialed the upstairs guard.
It rang four times and went to voicemail.
I dialed the house extension in Lily’s room on the second floor.
One ring.
Two rings.
Three—
Someone picked up the receiver.
Nobody spoke,-but over the quiet crackle of the line, I heard a tiny, rhythmic tapping against the mouthpiece.
Tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap.
My breath caught in my throat.
“Lily?” I whispered into the phone. “Sweetheart, don’t talk if you have to be quiet. Just tap once if you’re safe.”
Tap.
Relief hit me so hard I nearly sobbed, while beside me Luca’s knuckles loosened a fraction on the leather steering wheel as he listened on speakerphone.
“Where are you?” I asked softly, praying she wasn't still in her bed upstairs if Matteo and his men had breached the back mudroom. “Tap once for your bedroom, twice for the kitchen pantry.”
Tap-tap.
The little girl hadn't stayed upstairs!
“Why is she in the basement pantry?” Luca muttered, swerving past a delivery truck at eighty miles an hour as the streetlamps of the Gold Coast blurred past the windows.
“Because when she gets scared, she goes where the recipe box is,” I said, remembering how she had sat on that tiny wooden stool all evening with her lemon cake. “Wait—there’s a phone extension on the wall right behind the flour bins in the pantry!”
Tap-tap, Lily clicked again, faster this time.
And then, faint through the phone line, I heard heavy footsteps walking across the hardwood floor of the main kitchen right above the basement pantry stairs, followed by a woman’s sharp, panicked voice:
“Matteo, hurry up! The bedrooms upstairs are empty! If the kid isn't in her bed, the maid must have taken her out before we got here!”
It was Vanessa.
She was inside the house with him.
“Check the basement,” a raspy, deeper male voice answered from the kitchen above Lily’s head. “And find that oak recipe box in the library. If the passbook wasn't in the canvas bag at the bank, Sarah hid a copy somewhere in this house.”
I held the phone tight against my ear, looking at the GPS on Luca’s dashboard.
We were still four minutes away from Astor Street.
Four minutes was an eternity if Matteo walked down those twelve wooden steps into the basement pantry.
“Lily, listen to me very carefully,” I whispered, keeping my voice barely above a breath so the tiny speaker wouldn't carry in the dark pantry. “Do not hang up the phone, just set it down on the flour sack. Remember yesterday when we were looking for your mother’s bundt pan, and I showed you the loose cedar panel behind the canned peaches?”
Tap.
“Slide inside the dumbwaiter shaft behind that panel right now,” I instructed, my heart hammering against my ribs. “Pull the wooden crate of potatoes in front of the slit so nobody can see the latch. Can you do that for me, baby?”
Tap.
I heard the soft rustle of her little blue cotton dress against the receiver, and then the faint, barely audible scrape of a wooden crate sliding a few inches across the stone floor.
Ten seconds later, the basement pantry door creaked open over the open phone line.
Heavy boots thudded down the wooden stairs.
Neither Luca nor I breathed as the Mercedes whipped around the corner of Division Street, tires screaming against the asphalt.
Over the phone speaker, a flashlight beam clicked on, followed by the crash of glass jars being swept off a shelf onto the stone floor.
“Nothing down here but flour and canned goods!” Matteo’s voice echoed near the phone receiver sitting on the flour sack. “The kid isn't in the house, Vanessa. Luca must have moved her when he found the bracelet in the incinerator!”
“Then we can’t wait for him at Pier 14!” Vanessa’s voice came from the top of the pantry stairs, shrill with terror. “My father said if Luca gets that St. Jude’s file to the federal prosecutor, we all go to prison for twenty-five years—including you for Hannah Miller’s murder!”
My hand clamped over my mouth.
Even over the roar of the Mercedes engine, I had heard every word.
Including you for Hannah Miller’s murder.
My sister hadn't taken those sleeping pills.
Matteo Bellini had forced them down her throat four days after he ran Sarah’s car off Lake Shore Drive, all to bury a pediatric blood test.
“Shut up and get to the garage,” Matteo snarled over the phone. “If we can’t get the girl, I’ll burn this shrine of a house to the ground with his guards inside it so he knows what happens when he touches Bellini shipping!”
The sound of liquid sloshing from a metal canister echoed from the kitchen above.
Gasoline.
Just then, Luca killed the headlights of the Mercedes and coasted silently through the open iron gates of the Moretti estate.
A dark gray sedan was parked near the service garage with its trunk open.
“Stay in the car,” Luca whispered, reaching for the door handle and drawing the black nine-millimeter from his waistband. “Lock the doors. The moment you hear gunshots, drive straight to the police precinct on Clark Street.”
“I’m not leaving Lily in a house soaked in gasoline!” I whispered back, grabbing the heavy iron tire wrench from under the passenger seat floor mat. “While you take Matteo in the kitchen, I’m going through the coal chute window into the pantry to get her out!”
Before Luca could grab my arm, I slipped out the passenger door and stayed low behind the boxwood hedges lining the courtyard.
Through the tall arched windows of the kitchen, I saw Vanessa standing near the island holding a silver lighter, while a tall man in a black leather jacket—a jagged white burn scar twisting down the left side of his neck—poured gasoline from a red can across the mahogany dining room doors.
I dropped onto my knees by the low basement window near the rose bushes, shoved the iron wrench under the latch, and popped the frame inward.
I dropped down onto the coal room floor, hurried five steps into the dark pantry, and pulled the potato crate back from the cedar panel.
“Claire!” Lily whimpered, throwing her skinny arms around my neck in the pitch dark as I lifted her out of the dumbwaiter shaft.
I held her tight against my chest, grabbed the oak recipe box she was still clutching, and turned back toward the basement stairs—just as a shadow fell across the doorway above us.
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Vanessa stood at the top of the pantry steps, holding the silver lighter in one hand and a small silver revolver in the other, pointed straight at my chest.
“Give me the girl and the passbook, maid,” Vanessa whispered, her thumb clicking the hammer back, “or neither of you walks up these stairs.”
