Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO KEPT THE LETTERS
Luca's mother had died on November seventeenth, twelve years ago. Everybody at the mansion knew that date, though hardly anybody spoke about it. Every November the groundskeepers placed white roses beneath the portrait in the library, and Mrs. Carter gave the kitchen staff a day off from hosting dinners. Luca never held a party that week. Vanessa had called the tradition gloomy and suggested changing it once they were married.
I remembered her saying it in the pantry, as casually as someone requesting fewer flowers on a table.
Now a missing secretary had left a message dated the day of the hospital admission, and the necklace everyone was fighting over suddenly seemed less like jewelry than a key to something buried.
Daniel drove me back to my building after the café. He didn't insist on following me upstairs. Before leaving, he wrote down the name of the retired secretary: Miriam Sloane. She'd worked for Luca's mother, Teresa Moretti, for thirty-one years. When Teresa became ill, Miriam had handled appointments, correspondence, and household accounts. After the funeral, she'd moved to Wisconsin and kept mostly to herself.
"Luca is contacting her relatives," Daniel said. "No one has reported her missing. She may simply be visiting someone."
"Or she left because she knew somebody would come looking," I said.
"Both are possibilities. Neither is a fact yet."
He was beginning to sound like a teacher I couldn't quite hate.
At home, I called my mother in Rockford. She answered over the noise of a television game show.
"Nora, honey, why are you calling so late?"
"It's only six thirty."
"That's late for someone who works as hard as you do. Have you eaten?"
I assured her I had, which was only partly true. I told her I'd hurt my hand at work and would probably be on leave for a few days. I left out the threat, the police, and the missing necklace. My mother had spent twenty-five years cleaning offices before retirement and still blamed herself whenever I worked a double shift. I wasn't going to give her a new reason to worry.
"You know what your father would say," she told me.
"Write down what broke before you try to fix it."
"Exactly. And listen to the people who have to use the machine. They usually know where it hurts."
After the call, I found my old school notebook. Its last pages were empty. I made columns: what I saw, what others told me, what I still didn't know. Under the first column I wrote Vanessa, velvet box, fake emeralds, Keller, door, pain. Under the second: temporary access code, Dwyer's movements, missing secretary, altered clasp. My list of unknowns was much longer.
On the bottom of the page I wrote a question that had been bothering me all day: If Vanessa already had the real necklace, why did she need Luca to wear it at the wedding?
The answer came the next morning, although not from the person I expected.
Mrs. Carter called to ask whether I was comfortable returning to the mansion for a short interview with Luca's attorney. I was surprised she asked rather than ordering me to come. She said the meeting could take place anywhere, and I chose a small conference room at the public library, where the windows faced a busy street.
Luca arrived with a woman in a navy suit who introduced herself as Rachel Kim, his outside counsel. She explained they were preserving evidence for the police and for a possible civil claim. She emphasized that I was free to seek my own legal advice and didn't have to sign anything that day.
"I'd like an independent copy of anything I give you," I said.
"Of course," Rachel replied.
Luca sat across from me, his eyes tired. "Vanessa has postponed the wedding. Publicly she says I need time to recover from the stress of my mother's belongings being reviewed."
"Privately?"
"She's retained an attorney and moved into a hotel."
I hadn't expected relief to hurt. The idea of Vanessa leaving the mansion should have made me feel safe. Instead, I thought about the photograph outside my apartment. Someone else knew what I'd seen.
Rachel laid a copy of an old letter on the table. It was written on cream paper in dark blue ink, with careful looping handwriting.
"This is from Teresa's correspondence," she said. "Miriam Sloane sent it to Luca's attorney eleven years ago with instructions not to open it unless a particular event occurred."
"What event?" I asked.
Luca looked at me. "A challenge to the ownership of the emerald necklace."
The letter was short. Teresa described the necklace as a family piece but warned that its real significance was not its monetary value. She had entrusted a separate sealed record to a jeweler named Elias Varela. If anyone ever claimed that the necklace had been substituted, the jeweler would know where to find the original documentation.
"Why did she do that?" I asked.
"My mother knew our family had enemies," Luca said. "She was also careful about ownership. I thought this was another of her precautions."
Rachel turned a second page. There was a photograph of the necklace from decades earlier, taken before Luca was born. I recognized the distinctive setting, six emeralds arranged like leaves around a central stone. But behind it, barely visible, was a folded envelope with a red wax seal.
"What is that?" I asked.
"We don't know," Rachel said. "We are trying to locate Varela. His workshop closed eight years ago."
I stared at the photograph. The background was a kitchen table, not an elegant jeweler's counter. Someone had taken it in a hurry.
"May I look closer?"
Rachel passed me the tablet. My right hand steadied it while I zoomed in. On the envelope, I could make out a few handwritten letters: BEL—. It might have meant Bellini. It might have meant something else. I told them that.
Luca's expression changed anyway.
"My mother's maiden name was Bellwood," he said. "Vanessa's surname is Bellini. There's no connection that I know of."
Rachel made a note. "We should not assume one."
A phone rang. Luca glanced at it and stepped away to answer. Rachel used the pause to ask whether I'd considered filing a workplace injury claim through the household's insurance. She told me the proper procedure and offered contact details for a workers' compensation adviser. She was careful not to present herself as my lawyer. It was the most respectful professional conversation I'd had in months.
When Luca returned, he looked shocked.
"Miriam's granddaughter found her," he said. "She's staying with an old friend near Madison. She left the community voluntarily."
"Why?" Rachel asked.
"She received a call from someone who claimed I was about to be arrested for trying to sell my mother's necklace. She thought the police were coming to take her records."
I pictured the woman packing overnight, frightened and alone. "Did she know the caller?"
"She says the caller used my voice."
Nobody spoke for several seconds. Then Rachel said, "An imitation or altered recording is possible. We need the call information before we draw conclusions."
Miriam agreed to speak with us by secure video that afternoon. She appeared on the screen with white hair piled high and the alert gaze of someone who had spent her life noticing what wealthy people missed. She didn't seem surprised to see me.
"You're the girl whose hand was hurt," she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Teresa would have been furious."
Luca smiled sadly. "She would."
Miriam leaned closer to the camera. "Luca, your mother kept two sets of records. One was about jewelry. The other was about a promise she made to a woman named Rosa Bellini."
Vanessa's surname landed between us like a dropped plate.
"Who was Rosa?" Luca asked.
"A seamstress who worked for your family. She had a daughter and a son. Your mother helped her leave Chicago when somebody started threatening her."
"Who threatened her?"
Miriam closed her eyes. "I was never told the full story. But I heard your mother arguing with a man named Patrick Dwyer the night before she became ill. He was much younger then, ambitious, and already deeply connected to the charitable foundation."
I couldn't stop myself. "Was he the senator?"
"He wasn't a senator then. He was a lawyer."
Luca went still. "What did they argue about?"
"A settlement document. A child. And a signature that Teresa insisted was forged."
My pulse jumped. Suddenly the wedding, the insurance claim, and the missing necklace felt like pieces of a larger problem, though I still couldn't see the shape.
"Do you have the documents?" Rachel asked.
Miriam hesitated. "Not with me. I left them where Teresa instructed. But there's something else you need to know."
She looked directly at Luca.
"Your mother did not die believing her name had been cleared. She spent her last days trying to protect someone who was still a child."
The video froze briefly as the connection faltered. When it returned, Miriam was crying.
"Who was the child?" Luca asked.
Miriam pressed a hand to her mouth. "I can't tell you that yet. I promised your mother I would check the proof first."
The screen went dark.
Rachel immediately tried to reconnect, but Miriam didn't answer. A moment later, a text appeared from her granddaughter: INTERNET LOST. SHE IS SAFE. WILL CALL BACK.
I watched Luca grip the edge of the table until his knuckles whitened. He wasn't thinking about the emeralds anymore.
Neither was I.
For the first time, I wondered whether Vanessa's interest in the necklace had less to do with stealing it than with destroying whatever it could prove.
And when Rachel opened the second envelope from Teresa's archived correspondence, an old photograph slid onto the table.
It showed a little girl in a blue school uniform standing beside Teresa Moretti.
On the back, in Teresa's handwriting, were four words:
May you like
ROSA'S DAUGHTER. DO NOT FORGET.
The little girl had Vanessa's eyes.
