Chapter 4 - THE PEOPLE WHO WERE DECLARED DEAD
For three days, Meline did not enter her shop without checking the sidewalk first. She hated the new habit. It made the familiar stretch of Massachusetts Avenue feel borrowed from somebody else's life, a place she could visit only under conditions she had not agreed to.
Priya found her standing inside the doorway on Monday morning, keys in one hand, a garment bag in the other.
“Are you checking for reporters or gunmen?” Priya asked.
“Currently? Both.”
“Then here's a third possibility. A customer whose wedding is in six days and who deserves a suit.”
Meline looked down at the garment bag. Mrs. Adler's son had offered to postpone the wedding when he heard what happened. Meline had said absolutely not and found a replacement bolt of the original wool. Last night she'd stayed awake until nearly three recutting his jacket. It was the first thing since the shooting that had felt uncomplicated.
Priya held open the door. “Police update at ten. Your insurance adjuster at noon. And your mother is already calling me because you won't answer her.”
“That's because she insists on bringing soup and asking whether I'm drinking enough water.”
“An outrageous violation of your autonomy.”
Meline laughed, then stopped when she saw the police vehicle at the corner. The detective inside waved. She waved back and reminded herself that the street still belonged to its residents.
Warren's update was conducted at a community center rather than a Moretti property. It was one of Meline's conditions, and Warren appeared relieved not to have to negotiate entry through private security.
“We verified the Bellwether badges,” Warren said. “Adrian Moretti's identity was used on a file associated with the 2014 Harborwell scaffolding collapse. According to the death certificate, Adrian died in that accident. But the supporting records don't match.”
“Don't match how?” Lorenzo asked.
“The alleged employee was listed as thirty-six. Adrian would have been thirty-nine. The social security number belonged to a different deceased person. The photograph is too low-quality for facial identification.”
“So somebody borrowed his name,” Meline said.
“That's one possibility. Another is that the records were deliberately altered for reasons we haven't established.”
Nina set a folder on the table. “Bellwether's original contracts were routed through Tideglass Advisory, which has done work for both Moretti Freight and Lombardi Maritime.”
“Who authorized them?” Priya asked.
“Some were signed by Lorenzo's former chief operating officer, Julian Cross. Others used Isabella's credential.”
Lorenzo sat forward. “Julian was dismissed two years ago.”
“For what?” Warren asked.
“Charging private expenses to a corporate emergency account. He repaid most of them. My lawyers negotiated his exit.”
“Did you report the fraud?”
“No.”
Meline studied him. “Why not?”
“Because he threatened to release contracts that would implicate employees who hadn't approved them.”
“Then he learned threatening you works.”
Lorenzo looked at her. “Yes.”
She was finding that his honesty could be unsettling. She appreciated it; she also wanted him to have reached these conclusions before bullets came through her windows.
Warren slid a photograph across the table. It showed a man leaving an office tower in Providence two months earlier, wearing a gray coat. His face was half hidden beneath an awning.
“Could that be Adrian?” Lorenzo asked.
“I don't know,” Warren said. “We need an identification by someone who knew him as an adult.”
“He has a scar beneath his left ear,” Lorenzo said. “From falling off a bicycle when he was sixteen.”
“That's useful. We'll check what we can, lawfully.”
After the meeting, Meline went to visit Elaine at the temporary apartment she'd rented near Cambridge. Her mother had brought two boxes of Josephine's things: old patterns, photographs, postcards, and a notebook full of measurements for winter coats.
“Grandma always said the shape of a body told the truth about the life inside it,” Elaine said as they sorted. “That's why she made room for people. She didn't ask people to make room for her clothes.”
Meline ran her thumb over a faded photograph of Josephine in a red cardigan. “I wish she had told me what was happening here.”
“She tried to spare you.”
“Everybody keeps saying that. Lorenzo spared me. You spared me. Grandma spared me. It's remarkable how many people can make decisions about somebody without asking.”
Elaine looked wounded, then thoughtful. “You're right.”
The admission surprised Meline. Her mother was a kind woman, but kindness had occasionally taken the shape of an unmovable wall.
“I was twenty when those things happened,” Elaine said. “Grandma found me packing clothes because a man had been following me from work. She made me leave Boston for a month. When I came back, she told me never to ask again.”
“Who was following you?”
“A man with a watch on each wrist. He said his name was Mr. Cross.”
Meline looked up sharply. “Julian Cross?”
“I never knew his first name. He was younger than I expected somebody working for the Morettis to be.”
“Julian would have been a child thirty years ago.”
“Then perhaps it was his father.”
Elaine opened a small green notebook. Inside was a newspaper clipping about Eastbank. On the reverse Josephine had written, in small careful letters: Cross the father keeps records; Cross the son keeps secrets.
Meline called Warren immediately. The detective asked her not to guess which Cross was involved until they confirmed a relationship, but she requested copies of the notebook pages.
At four, Meline returned to Hayes Bespoke. Two customers waited to collect alterations. She spent an hour discussing inseams, pocket placement, and the difficult art of making a dress comfortable for somebody who planned to dance. The ordinary conversation steadied her in a way a locked door never could.
When she finished, Lorenzo was sitting on Josephine's sofa. He had asked permission that morning to stop by, and her assistant had let him in after checking with Meline. He wore a plain wool coat, and his guard waited outside.
“Did you buy another suit?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then you're occupying valuable sofa real estate.”
“I brought something.”
He handed her a folded letter. It was addressed to the trustees of the Eastbank Workers' Benefit Fund, dated three weeks before Benedict Rowe disappeared. On the signature line was Anthony Moretti, Lorenzo's father.
“What is it?”
“A request to suspend benefit payments pending an internal audit. My father approved it.”
Meline read it. “Families lost their payments?”
“Some did. The fund was dissolved after the warehouse fire. I was told the remaining money went to a state compensation program, but the records I found don't show a transfer.”
“Then the missing money matters more than who inherited a watch.”
“Yes.”
“Does it matter to you?”
He met her gaze. “It has to.”
She sat across from him. “That's not quite an answer.”
“I spent years thinking my father's greatest crime was allowing Adrian to disappear. Now I'm beginning to understand how many people disappeared from his calculations while he was alive.”
Meline folded the letter. “That's the trouble with power, isn't it? People stop counting the people who aren't in the room.”
“Except you,” he said.
“Except me. I make garments for people other stores tell to lose weight before they deserve something beautiful. I'm very good at counting the people left out.”
Lorenzo smiled, without amusement. “Then I have a lot to learn.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a call from Warren. A man had presented himself at the police station in Providence claiming to have information about the Harborwell death records. He had given his name as Adrian Cross.
“Cross?” Meline repeated.
“The surname may be an alias,” Warren said. “He says he can prove what happened at Eastbank. He will speak only if Meline Hayes is present.”
Lorenzo stood. “Absolutely not.”
Meline turned toward him. “Don't start.”
Warren continued, “I haven't agreed to that condition. You're not obligated to attend, and I'm assessing his credibility before anything else.”
Meline looked at Josephine's sign above the counter and thought about how many people had made the decision to hide a truth from her.
“Tell him I'll consider it,” she said. “After I know why he wants me there.”
Warren paused. “He gave us a photograph as proof he knows your family.”
Meline waited.
“It shows your grandmother standing outside Eastbank with two boys. One looks like Adrian Moretti. The other is holding a bell-shaped pendant.”
From the sofa, Lorenzo whispered, “Julian.”
Meline looked at him.
“You knew Julian as a boy?”
“Yes,” Lorenzo said slowly. “He grew up in our house.”
His voice had gone distant. “And he was the last person who saw my brother alive.”
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Meline had known that Lorenzo kept a photograph of his brother in his wallet; she had not understood that another boy appeared at the edge of every photograph from those years. Now she imagined a child learning to be useful to a powerful family by knowing what to conceal. It was a familiar kind of education, though hers had involved silence at dinner tables rather than false identities. She wondered whether Julian had learned to love the Morettis, fear them, or confuse the two things until neither feeling could be separated from the other. That question, she decided, was for Julian to answer.
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