Chapter 4 - THE LOCKED THIRD FLOOR
Luca took the pink dry-cleaning ticket and the mother-of-pearl rosary from my palm.
His fingers brushed mine—warm, rough, and steady—before his eyes dropped to the faded black ink stamped across the paper: Lakeview Cleaners, Evanston, IL. November 14.
While Luca had been in Rome for ten days last November renegotiating olive oil and shipping tariffs, the main house had been placed on minimal staff. I remembered that week because Mrs. Gable had given all the downstairs maids four days off, telling us Mr. Santoro was using the mansion for private auditing meetings and didn't want to be disturbed.
"That's impossible," Vanessa said, her voice rising an octave. "Lots of women have those initials!"
Marco didn't say a word. He was staring at the silver cross dangling from Luca’s fingers as if he were looking at a ghost.
"This was Clara's grandmother's rosary," Marco whispered, his voice barely audible. "She never took it off. Not even when she slept."
He looked up at me, and for a split second, the slick, composed financial advisor vanished. His eyes were bloodshot, wild with something that looked terrifyingly like hope—and terror.
"Where did you find this?" Marco demanded, lunging a step toward me.
Luca’s arm came up instantly, his forearm catching Marco squarely across the chest and shoving him back. "Stay where you are."
"Luca, you don't understand!" Marco’s voice cracked. "If that rosary was in a coat on the third floor in November—Wait. You're accusing me of hiding her here while you were in Rome?"
"You were the only one with a key to the house that week, Marco," Luca said coldly.
"I wasn't even here!" Marco shouted, pulling at his collar. "I told you I was doing audits here because I didn't want you to know where I actually went! I spent that entire week in Minneapolis following a tip from a private investigator who claimed he saw Clara at a pediatric clinic! It was a dead end!"
Luca frowned, his dark brows drawing together. "If you were in Minneapolis that week, and I was in Rome... then who used your security code to enter the house on November fourteenth?"
Marco went completely still. "Someone used my code?"
"The alarm log registered your four-digit pin at the service gate at two in the morning on November fifteenth," Luca said slowly. "I checked the monthly security printout when I got back from Italy. I assumed it was you working late."
Vanessa backed up until the heels of her satin shoes hit the fireplace hearth.
Both men turned their heads and looked at her.
"Vanessa," Marco said, his voice dropping to a low, trembling growl. "You knew my security code. I gave it to you in October so you could drop off the catering contracts."
"Are you insane?" Vanessa snapped, her chest heaving beneath the tight lace bodice. "Why would I bring Clara here?"
"Let's go upstairs and find out," Luca said.
He unlocked the study door and stepped into the hallway. From the dining room at the far end of the house, the faint sound of clinking silverware and laughter drifted toward us. Forty powerful people were eating filet mignon while the entire foundation of the Moretti family cracked open behind closed doors.
"Keep up," Luca told me quietly, glancing back to make sure I was beside him, well out of Marco’s and Vanessa’s reach.
We didn't take the grand marble staircase in the foyer where the guests could see us. Instead, Luca led us through the butler’s pantry and up the narrow oak servants' stairs—my stairs, the ones I climbed ten times a day carrying laundry baskets and vacuum cleaners.
Watching Vanessa Bellini hike up an eighty-thousand-dollar couture gown to climb the dusty back stairwell in four-inch heels would have been satisfying if my heart hadn't been lodged in my throat.
When we reached the third-floor landing, the air was noticeably cooler. This wing had four bedrooms, a small sitting room, and the deep cedar storage closet at the end of the hall.
"Which closet, Sophie?" Luca asked.
"This one, sir," I said, leading him down the runner rug. "Mrs. Gable gave me the brass key two weeks ago and asked me to air out the winter linens."
I pulled my housekeeping keyring from my apron, selected the small brass key, and unlocked the cedar door.
Luca pulled the chain for the overhead bulb. Yellow light spilled over racks of garment bags, spare down comforters, and stacked leather trunks.
"Here," I said, reaching between two wool overcoats. I pulled out the navy-blue cashmere coat on its wooden hanger.
Luca took the hanger from me and held open the collar. Embroidered in gold thread on the cream silk label were the letters C.B.S.
Marco reached out with a shaking hand and touched the sleeve. "I bought this for her in Montreal on our honeymoon," he whispered, his voice breaking. "Wait. Look at the cuff."
He turned the right sleeve over. Dark, reddish-brown stains crusted the edge of the navy wool—stains I hadn't noticed in the dim light two weeks ago because they blended into the dark fabric.
Luca’s eyes hardened. "That's blood. Old blood."
"I didn't put this coat here!" Vanessa said shrilly, standing in the doorway. "Maybe Clara broke into the house herself! She knew Marco worked here! Maybe she came looking for money and hid the coat before she ran off again!"
I looked past Luca into the cedar closet. Something was wrong.
Two weeks ago, when I had hung the coat back up after mending the pocket, there had been a small floral hatbox sitting on the shelf directly above it. I remembered it because the ribbon had been frayed.
Now the shelf was empty.
And down on the cedar floorboards, beneath the hem of the hanging coats, the corner of the vents had been unscrewed.
"Mr. Moretti," I said quietly, pointing toward the baseboard at the back of the closet. "That brass vent grate wasn't loose when I was in here two weeks ago."
Luca handed the coat to Marco and crouched down inside the closet. With two fingers, he lifted the loose brass grate away from the wall.
Sitting inside the dusty galvanized heating duct was the floral hatbox. Someone had moved it from the top shelf and shoved it into the ductwork—recently enough that the dust around the edges was freshly disturbed.
Luca pulled the box out, set it on a steamer trunk, and lifted the lid.
Inside were three items.
First, a plastic hospital bracelet from St. Jude’s Mercy Hospital in Evanston, dated July nineteenth of last year: Baby Boy Santoro.
Second, an empty prescription bottle for heavy post-surgical painkillers, prescribed not to Clara, and not to Vanessa—but to Victor Bellini.
And third, at the very bottom of the box, was a folded piece of heavy cream stationery—the exact same stationery Luca kept in his desk downstairs.
Luca unfolded the paper. As he read it, the muscles in his jaw locked so tightly I thought his teeth might shatter.
"What is it?" Marco demanded, craning his neck. "Luca, what does it say?"
Luca slowly turned the paper around.
May you like
It wasn't a letter from Clara. It was a handwritten receipt for fifty thousand dollars in cash, signed four months ago on November fifteenth.
And the signature at the bottom belonged to Mrs. Gable—the head housekeeper who had hired me seven months ago, and who had assigned me to clean this exact closet two weeks before the wedding.
