Chapter 8 - THE HARBOR TICKET
The silence in the room was shattered by the crackle of police radios in the hallway. Two uniformed officers stepped into the dining room, but I barely registered them.
My eyes were locked on the laptop screen.
The man in the photo, partially obscured by shadows, was wearing Robert’s faded green sailing coat. The one with the ripped left pocket I had meant to sew.
"That’s impossible," Vincent said, standing beside me. "Eleanor, I went to the funeral. I saw the casket."
"It was a closed casket," I whispered. "The coast guard found his skiff smashed against the rocks during a storm. They found a body in the water two days later. The medical examiner said it was too battered... they identified him by his dental records."
"Dental records can be faked," Celia said. She was handcuffed to the chair, but she was smiling. A cruel, knowing smile.
I spun around to face her. "What did you do?"
Celia leaned forward. "You think you're so smart, Eleanor. You think your husband was a saint. Building a clinic for little Leo. Protecting the family." She laughed. "Robert didn't die in that storm. He faked his death."
"Why would he do that?" Amelia cried.
"Because he found out the truth about who Margaret owed money to," Celia sneered. "It wasn't some random street thugs, Silvia. You and your naive husband never dug deep enough."
Silvia paled. "What do you mean?"
Celia looked at Vincent. "Who do you think ran the loan sharking operations in the harbor twenty years ago, Vincent? Before your father decided to go legitimate and start this stupid foundation?"
Vincent physically recoiled. "My father?"
"Your father," Celia confirmed. "Margaret owed money to the Marino family. When she died, your father felt guilty. He hid the baby and started the charity to clear his conscience. But Robert found the old ledgers. He realized the Marinos were the ones who drove Margaret to her death."
I felt the room tilt. Robert knew. He knew the people who had taken my sister from me were the very people we had trusted for decades.
"He confronted me with it," Celia continued, her eyes gleaming with malice. "He said he was going to expose the whole family. Tear down the foundation, ruin the Marino legacy. I told him if he did that, I would cut off every cent to Leo's therapy, and I would make sure the boy was taken away by child services."
"You blackmailed him," I said, my voice hollow.
"I gave him a choice," Celia corrected. "Leave, disappear, and let me run the foundation my way... or watch his great-nephew suffer. He chose to take his little boat out into a hurricane. I assume he paid off someone at the morgue to switch the dental records with some poor drowned drifter."
I stared at the photograph again. The man in the coat. December. A month after he supposedly died.
"If he's alive," I said slowly, "why was he at the winter gala?"
Celia frowned. "I don't know. To check on the boy? To spy on me? It doesn't matter. He's a ghost."
Amelia suddenly gasped. She dropped to her knees again, grabbing the manila folder that contained the blueprints and the clinic ledgers. She shook it upside down.
A small piece of thick, glossy paper fluttered to the floor.
It was a ferry ticket.
"I found this tucked inside the blueprints," Amelia said, picking it up. "I thought it was just trash."
She handed it to me.
It was a ticket for the Martha’s Vineyard auto ferry.
The date on the ticket was today.
The departure time was 11:30 PM.
I looked at the grandfather clock. It was 11:15 PM.
May you like
"The ferry terminal is ten minutes from here," Vincent said, reading my mind.
I gripped the ticket. "Officers," I said to the two policemen standing awkwardly in the doorway. "Arrest that woman. Vincent... drive me to the harbor."
