Chapter 7 - THE JETTY IN THE RAIN
Luca slammed the Escalade into gear, the tires spraying wet gravel as he steered straight down the steep lawn toward the lakefront.
"Stay inside with my mother and lock the doors!" he ordered the driver as we skidded to a halt thirty yards from the stone jetty.
Through the sheets of rain and the glare of our high beams, I saw Vanessa on her knees in the mud beside the boathouse. Her red silk engagement gown was torn and soaked through, one foot bare where the silver heel had snapped off in the cellar, clutching a waterproof leather portfolio against her chest.
Standing over her in a drenched charcoal-gray suit was Helen Whitfield.
And in Helen's gloved right hand was the heavy iron crowbar she had used to pry the coal chute off the cellar wall.
"Give me the portfolio, Vanessa," Helen shouted over the roar of the waves crashing against the limestone breakwater. "You don't even know what you're holding!"
"You lied to me!" Vanessa screamed back, shivering violently as she scrambled backward toward the edge of the pier. "You told me the safe had the bank records showing Enzo Moretti framed my father! You used me to get your own forged customs manifests back before Luca's auditors found them!"
"Your father Marco was a fool who refused to sign off on my port transfers in 2004, and Enzo Moretti was an even bigger fool for investigating it!" Helen snarled, raising the iron bar.
Luca was already out of the SUV, running across the slick flagstones.
"Helen!" Luca's voice boomed across the water. "Drop the iron!"
Helen spun around, blinded for a second by the Escalade's headlights. Instead of dropping the crowbar, she lunged downward and grabbed the collar of Vanessa's silk dress, dragging the terrified woman up against the stone parapet where the black water of Lake Michigan churned twelve feet below.
"Stay back, Mr. Moretti!" Helen backed toward the open service door of her idling gray sedan, using a sobbing, barefoot Vanessa as a shield. "Take one more step and she goes over the wall with the portfolio!"
I slipped out of the passenger side of the Escalade, staying low behind the cedar hedge that lined the boathouse path. My black work shoes gripped the wet stone where Vanessa's silver heels had failed her.
I didn't have a weapon, except for the heavy brass Maglite flashlight in my left hand—and the keys to Helen's idling gray sedan, which were still sitting in the ignition three feet from where I was crouched behind the open driver's door.
"You won't make it past the gates, Helen," Luca said calmly, keeping his hands visible at his sides as he stepped closer to draw her attention away from the car. "Hannah's mother woke up at Mercy Hospital. She remembered who cut my father's brake lines on the Wabash bridge in 2004."
Helen let out a bitter, jagged laugh, rain plastering her gray hair to her forehead.
"Evelyn Brooks couldn't prove it twenty-two years ago, and she can't prove it tonight!" Helen spat. "Enzo found out I was using the hospital's medical charity shipments to smuggle untaxed commercial freight through his docks. He was on his way to the federal building with Marco Bellini's sworn affidavit when he went into the river. All I needed was that green safe to stay buried until I retired next month—until this greedy idiot's father decided to demand the Lake Forest deed as wedding collateral!"
"You killed my uncle?" Vanessa whispered in horror, staring at the older woman gripping her throat. "No—my father. Marco was my father. And you killed Mr. Moretti?"
"I survived!" Helen snapped, shoving Vanessa hard toward the edge of the wet stone parapet as she lunged backward for the driver's seat of her car.
Everything happened in three heartbeats.
As Helen threw her weight backward into the open doorway of the sedan, I reached through the steering column, yanked the keys straight out of the ignition, and swung the heavy steel Maglite downward onto her wrist.
The iron crowbar clattered onto the flagstones.
At the exact same instant, Vanessa lost her footing on the slick moss at the edge of the pier. Her bare, muddy foot slipped over the limestone lip, and she screamed as her body tipped backward over the churning black lake.
Luca didn't hesitate.
Leaving Helen sprawled across the front seat of the dead sedan, he dived across the wet stones and caught Vanessa's outstretched wrist with both hands just as her knees went over the wall.
I dropped the flashlight, scrambled to the edge beside him, and grabbed the soaked silk around Vanessa's waist. Together, our muscles straining against the pull of the freezing spray, Luca and I hauled her back over the stone wall onto the jetty.
Vanessa collapsed onto the flagstones, coughing up rainwater, clutching the leather portfolio to her ribs as she stared at my muddy hands and Luca's torn coat sleeve.
"You pulled me up," she whispered, her teeth chattering so hard she could barely form the words. "After everything I did to your mother... and to you... you pulled me up."
I looked down at her bare, scraped foot—cut by the exact same cold stone that had bruised mine earlier—and gently draped my dry wool cardigan over her shaking shoulders.
"Nobody deserves to drown for someone else's lies, Vanessa," I said quietly.
Behind us, Luca's two security guards sprinted down the lawn and pinned Helen Whitfield against the side of the gray sedan as the blue-and-red lights of the Lake Forest police cruisers finally flashed through the main estate gates.
The nightmare at the lake was over.
May you like
Or so I thought—until Vanessa unzipped the waterproof leather portfolio with trembling fingers and pulled out a sealed white envelope that hadn't been burned in the cellar.
"Hannah," Vanessa whispered, holding the envelope out to me in the rain. "This was inside the tin box with my drawing. It's addressed to you—in Enzo Moretti's handwriting."
