Chapter 2 - TWO BELLS IN THE DARK
Dominic did not sleep that night.
At four in the morning he stood in his study with Ethan's drawing on the desk and an old police report opened beside it. The official account was short. Electrical fault. Fire originating in the carriage house's storage room. One adult victim, presumed trapped when the roof collapsed. Identity established through personal effects, dental records, and a report prepared by a medical examiner who had since retired.
Mara Bellucci, thirty-four, dead on December twenty-third.
Dominic had repeated that sentence in his mind so often it had hardened into certainty. He had arranged the funeral, selected her dress, accepted condolences, and stopped playing the piano because every note reminded him of her. Now a drawing by a child was threatening the only explanation he'd allowed himself to believe.
He called Nico into the study.
“Who handled the investigation?”
“Your uncle coordinated with the police and the insurer. You weren't in a position to make decisions, Mr. Bellucci.”
“I signed documents.”
“Mostly what they put in front of you.”
Dominic remembered those days badly. He remembered driving back from Milwaukee after receiving Carlo's call. He remembered fire trucks blocking the estate road, smoke visible over the trees. He remembered Ethan in a borrowed sweater, refusing to take his eyes off the ambulance doors. He remembered asking whether his wife had suffered and being given an answer so vague he never asked again.
“Get the original emergency dispatch records,” he said. “Not the summary.”
“Do you suspect an error?”
“I suspect I never asked a question I should have asked.”
Nico said nothing. He had been hired after the fire and owed Carlo no special loyalty, which was why Dominic trusted him with this request.
“And Nico? No one goes near Ethan without someone I choose in the room. Not even family.”
By breakfast, snow had begun to cover the courtyard. Dominic entered the kitchen instead of ringing for his meal. He found Elena standing at the sink with Sophie perched on a chair, solemnly helping shape small pieces of dough into cookies. The music box sat on the windowsill, safely beyond the child's reach.
“You're up early,” Elena said.
“So are you.”
“We were trying to be quiet.”
“Quiet isn't required here.”
She glanced at him with a look that suggested the opposite had been true for everyone employed in the house.
Dominic accepted the rebuke, though she had not spoken it aloud. “I'm arranging for a temporary apartment for you and Sophie, if you would prefer one. Near enough that you could continue working, or you can take paid leave. After what happened yesterday, I can't pretend this is an ordinary place.”
Elena set down the dough. “Are we in danger?”
“I don't know yet.”
“Then please don't make plans for us without asking.”
He nodded. She had a clear, tired voice and the habit of standing straight when frightened. It reminded him of Mara, who had once informed three men at a board meeting that their charitable foundation was not a personal checking account.
“I'll ask,” Dominic said.
Sophie peered over the edge of the chair. “Can Ethan have a star cookie? He gave me the sky.”
“You should ask him.”
“I did. He wrote yes.”
Elena smiled despite herself. “She went upstairs earlier. Mrs. Vale was with them.”
At the name of the senior housekeeper, Dominic became alert. Mrs. Vale—Rosa Vale to the few people who knew her well—had worked at the estate since Dominic was nineteen. She had been Ethan's most reliable caregiver after the fire.
“Has Rosa ever talked to you about Mara?” he asked.
Elena hesitated. “Only to say Ethan loved her very much.”
“Anything about the night she died?”
“No. But she checks the old service corridor every time there's a storm.”
Dominic left the kitchen before his coffee was poured.
He found Rosa in the linen room, arranging tablecloths with military precision. Her hands paused when she saw him.
“I need you to tell me what happened in the carriage house,” he said.
Rosa's gaze moved toward the door. “The police have a report.”
“I have the report. I'm asking you.”
For a long time she folded and unfolded the same cloth. Then she sat on a narrow wooden bench.
“Mara came to me that night,” she said. “She asked me to look after Ethan while she went to meet someone. She was angry. I'd never seen her so angry.”
“Who?”
“She wouldn't say. She told me if anybody asked where she was, I should say she was choosing ornaments in the carriage house.”
“Was she?”
“No. She went toward the old passage.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because your uncle said she had gone into the fire looking for Ethan, and I thought...” Rosa's voice thinned. “I thought if I told you she'd lied about where she was going, it would make you hate her memory. And I thought perhaps I had misunderstood.”
“You didn't tell the investigator?”
“Carlo said he would.”
The words settled between them.
Dominic had always considered Rosa loyal. She was loyal, perhaps, but she'd let another man's confidence replace her own judgment. He recognized the pattern because he'd done the same.
“Ethan says Mara walked out alive.”
Rosa pressed her knuckles to her lips.
“I saw someone,” she whispered. “From the kitchen window. They carried a woman toward a car. But everything was chaotic, sir. There was smoke. I couldn't see her face.”
“What car?”
“A dark station wagon, not one of ours.”
“Who was driving?”
“I didn't see.”
She began to cry silently, furious at herself. Dominic sat beside her instead of demanding that she stop.
“Why the bells?” he asked.
Rosa looked at him sharply. “What bells?”
“Two silver handbells. In Mara's photograph.”
“That was their game. She'd ring one bell when she wanted Ethan to come into the greenhouse and two when she wanted him to stay away. They used it when she was gardening, because he liked hiding among the ferns.”
“And the service bell?”
Rosa's face drained. “It connects to the carriage-house passage. It rang twice during the fire. I thought the wiring was damaged.”
Dominic stood so quickly the bench scraped the floor.
The bells hadn't been merely a game. Mara had taught her five-year-old son a signal before the fire. He had kept the message, stitched or preserved in the music box, for three years.
Later that morning, Dr. Hannah Lin arrived at Dominic's request. She had been Ethan's child psychologist for eight months. She refused to enter his room until Dominic explained why he had summoned her.
“He drew something about the night of his mother's death,” Dominic said. “And he indicated someone threatened him.”
Dr. Lin looked grave. “Don't interrogate him. A child can be accurate and still be frightened or confused about details. Give him ways to communicate without demanding a performance. Make sure he's safe first.”
“I want to know everything.”
“I know. But his job isn't to solve your family's mystery. His job is to be a child.”
Dominic had faced prosecutors with less unease than he felt at that statement.
“Then help me make that possible.”
She spent forty minutes upstairs with Ethan and returned with a sealed envelope. “He asked me to give you this. He chose what to draw. I didn't lead him.”
Inside was a picture of a black car on snow. A white rectangle showed through the rear window, with a little hand pressed against it. Beside the car stood a man wearing a ring and carrying a rectangular case.
Under the picture Ethan had written: SHE WAS AWAKE.
Dominic walked to the window. Snow collected along the balustrade. The carriage house no longer stood; Carlo had ordered it demolished before Dominic had the strength to object.
That afternoon, Nico returned with the dispatch audio and a transcript.
“There were two emergency calls,” he said. “The first reported an injured woman leaving the estate in a station wagon. The second, forty-nine minutes later, reported the fire. Only the second made it into the public record.”
“Who placed the first call?”
Nico handed him a page.
A female caller had said she was employed by the Bellucci household. She'd given her name as Beatrice Wynn and reported seeing a woman forced into a vehicle behind the service courtyard.
Beatrice had been a junior housekeeper. Dominic remembered Carlo telling him she had resigned immediately after the fire and moved out of state.
Nico tapped the bottom of the page. “The call was marked withdrawn. The person who requested the withdrawal used an internal department code registered to a private attorney.”
“Whose attorney?”
“Carlo's.”
Dominic closed his eyes. A sequence of tiny betrayals was becoming an architecture large enough to live inside.
The study door opened. Ethan stood there with Sophie, holding the star-shaped cookie she'd made for him. He looked from the transcript to his father, then raised the cookie like an offering.
Dominic knelt and accepted it.
“I believe you,” he told his son.
Ethan's face crumpled. He stepped into Dominic's arms, gripping his shirt with surprising force.
It was the first time in three years he had done so without being asked.
Then a telephone on the desk rang.
The caller did not identify herself. She sounded older, breathless, and frightened.
“If you want to know who was in the station wagon,” she said, “stop searching the fire records and find the woman who signed the death certificate.”
“Who are you?” Dominic demanded.
May you like
“Someone who was supposed to be dead too.”
The line went silent.
