Chapter 7 - THE WINTER COAT
“No,” Sal said immediately, shaking his head hard. “No, Luca. I knew Vincenzo Moretti for forty years. Your father lost ten years of his life the night Matteo’s car went into that river. He never slept through the night again. He would never have protected the man who killed his boy.”
“Then why is his signature on the impound order ordering the car crushed within two hours of the crash?” Luca demanded, his voice echoing off the tiled walls of the station concourse.
I leaned over the open silver briefcase on the bench, looking at the remaining items inside.
Underneath the bank books was a smaller manila envelope sealed with red wax that had cracked down the center. Written across the front in shaky, aging handwriting—the same handwriting from the impound signature—were two words:
FOR MATTEO.
“Luca,” I said quietly, touching his arm. “Look at this.”
Luca picked up the manila envelope and pulled out the single sheet of heavy cream stationery inside—Moretti house stationery, embossed with the family crest from the study I dusted three times a week.
Luca read it once.
Then he sat down heavily on the wooden station bench, burying his face in one hand while his other arm stayed curved around little Leo’s shoulders.
Sal took the letter gently from Luca’s hand and read it aloud for the rest of us:
“Matteo—if you have opened this locker, then Marcus has already moved against your brother and me. Five days ago, Dr. Rossi told me my heart is failing and I have less than six months left. Marcus found the hospital report on my desk. He knows Luca is only twenty-six and thinks he can force the board to hand the shipping company to Hector Bellini once I am gone. I signed the order to crush your car this morning because Marcus told me that if a police investigation opened into the garage sabotage, he would tell Hector Bellini where Camilla is hiding—and that Camilla was in the passenger seat with you before you dropped her at the train station at midnight. I am dying, and I cannot fight them both while my heart fails. Take this money, take Camilla, and never come back to Chicago. Let the world believe you died in that river—”
Sal’s voice broke completely.
I covered my mouth with both hands.
“Wait,” Vanessa whispered, staring at Sal in disbelief. “Vincenzo thought Matteo was still alive when he signed that paper at eight-thirty in the morning?”
“Matteo’s body wasn’t pulled from the river channel until noon that day,” Sal said, his voice thick with tears as the terrible truth came together. “At eight-thirty in the morning, they had only pulled the empty gray coupe onto the barge. Marcus told Vincenzo that Matteo had swum ashore and escaped—so Vincenzo would crush the evidence of the cut brake line to protect Matteo and Camilla from Hector!”
And four hours later, when the divers brought twenty-four-year-old Matteo up from the cold water, Vincenzo Moretti realized he had just destroyed the only proof of his son’s murder to save a boy who was already dead.
“And three days after the funeral,” Luca whispered from the bench, his eyes red as he looked up at Sal, “my father had the massive heart attack that put him in the wheelchair for the last two years of his life.”
“And he couldn’t speak clearly after the stroke,” Sal murmured, wiping his eyes with the back of his leather glove. “He used to sit on the terrace holding your hand, trying to point toward the garage whenever Marcus walked past. We thought his mind was gone.”
My heart broke for the lonely old man in the photograph—and for Luca, who had spent six years carrying the weight of his family alone under the same roof as the man who had destroyed it.
Leo reached up with his small, bare right hand and patted Luca’s cheek.
“Don’t be sad, Uncle Luca,” the six-year-old said softly. “My mommy said my daddy is watching us from the stars.”
Luca pulled the boy against his chest and held him tight, closing his eyes for a long moment.
When Luca opened them again, the grief was still there—deep and permanent—but the hesitation was gone.
He looked at the three Cayman Islands bank books in the briefcase.
“Camilla got into this locker the morning after the crash using Matteo’s key,” Luca said, piecing the last steps together. “She found my father’s letter waiting here—because my father and Matteo used Locker 412 as an emergency drop. She realized Matteo wasn’t coming, left the money untouched so Marcus couldn’t trace the withdrawals, put the police report inside, and fled south to have Leo.”
Suddenly, my cell phone—no, Sal’s old flip phone—buzzed inside the pocket of his driving coat.
Sal pulled it out and flipped it open.
It was a text message from the mansion’s kitchen landline number—sent via the house’s automated security alert panel that the staff used for grocery deliveries.
Except the message only had four words:
PANTRY LOCKED. HELP TERESA.
“That’s Mrs. Gable, the cook,” I gasped. “She’s the only one besides me who knows how to type a text on the kitchen wall panel!”
“Marcus knows we didn’t get caught at the West Addison house,” Luca said, standing up with Leo in his arms while Sal snapped the silver briefcase shut. “Which means he’s locking down the mansion before we can come back with the boy.”
“You can’t drive through the front gates,” Vanessa said, stepping beside Luca as we hurried back toward the stairs. “Marcus controls the iron gates from the security room off the garage. If Sal pulls the Mercedes into the driveway, he’ll trap you in the courtyard.”
I stopped at the top of the marble steps, my eyes falling on Sal’s dark driving coat—and the cardboard box still sitting on the floorboard of the Mercedes outside.
“He won’t trap us if we don’t use the gates,” I said.
Luca looked at me sharply. “The perimeter wall is nine feet high, Emma.”
“Not on the east side behind the greenhouse,” I said. “Three days ago, when you told Sal to keep the first week of October clear for Wisconsin, the heating oil truck backed into the service gate behind the boiler room. The latch is broken—the groundskeeper chained it shut with a padlock from the garage locker.”
I looked at Sal.
Sal reached into the pocket of his chauffeur’s coat and held up a small brass ring of maintenance keys—the keys Vanessa hadn’t even bothered to ask for when she told him to pack his box.
“Thirty-four years,” Sal said grimly. “I oiled that padlock myself.”
May you like
Then Vanessa stepped forward and pulled the diamond engagement ring off her finger, holding it out to Luca.
“Let me walk through the front door alone first,” she told him, her voice steady. “My father is still in that dining room waiting for me. If I walk in screaming that you left me on the side of the road after a fight, every guard Marcus has in the foyer will come into the main hall with my father—leaving the back staircase wide open for you.”
