Chapter 4 - WHAT WAS BURIED BENEATH THE BLUEBIRD
The SUV came across the parking lot without slowing.
Maggie had time for one clear thought.
Not again.
Then instinct took over.
She grabbed Curtis by the collar and dragged him behind the brick corner of the church as the vehicle jumped the curb where they had been sitting.
Metal struck the dumpster.
The impact sounded like an explosion.
Curtis cried out.
Maggie dropped beside him.
The SUV reversed.
Headlights swept the wall.
She tightened both hands around the tire iron.
“Stay down.”
Curtis laughed weakly.
“Wasn’t planning a sprint.”
The engine revved.
Then another set of headlights appeared at the church entrance.
A sedan cut across the lot and stopped sideways between Maggie and the SUV.
Anthony Russo came out of the passenger side before the wheels stopped moving.
Dominic came out the other.
The SUV fled.
Anthony raised his phone and photographed the rear plate.
Dominic did not watch it go.
He came directly to Maggie.
“What happened?”
His voice was controlled.
His eyes were not.
Maggie had never seen fear on Dominic Vescari before.
She decided immediately that she did not like it.
“Curtis is hurt.”
“I can see that.”
“I called an ambulance.”
“You were supposed to call me before coming here.”
“No. Eli was supposed to call you if I failed to call him.”
Dominic stared at her.
“That distinction is not helping you.”
“I’m not trying to help me.”
He looked at the tire iron in her hands.
“What were you planning to do with that?”
“Renegotiate their attitude.”
Anthony made a sound that might have been a cough.
Dominic looked at him.
Anthony became deeply interested in the SUV photograph.
Sirens approached.
Curtis’s eyes opened.
He looked at Dominic.
“St. Agnes,” he whispered.
Dominic changed.
Maggie saw it happen.
His face did not move, but something inside it closed.
Curtis smiled without humor.
“There he is.”
Dominic crouched.
“Who sent you?”
“Mercer.”
“For Crowe?”
Curtis’s eyes drifted toward Maggie.
“For someone who doesn’t want you asking old questions.”
“What questions?”
Curtis coughed.
Blood touched his lips.
“The fire.”
Dominic’s hand curled into a fist.
“What about it?”
“Wasn’t who you thought.”
The ambulance arrived before Curtis could say more.
Paramedics pushed Dominic aside, cut Curtis’s shirt open, and loaded him onto a stretcher.
Detective Ortiz arrived three minutes later wearing jeans, boots, and the expression of a woman who had been personally insulted by bedtime.
She looked at Maggie.
Then Dominic.
Then the damaged dumpster.
“I leave you people alone for six hours.”
Maggie held out the flash drive.
Ortiz’s eyes narrowed.
“Where did you get that?”
“Curtis gave it to me.”
Dominic turned.
Maggie ignored him.
Ortiz put the drive in an evidence bag.
“Did he say what was on it?”
“Insurance.”
“Against?”
“Apparently everybody.”
Ortiz pocketed the bag.
Dominic’s voice went cold.
“I need a copy.”
Ortiz laughed once.
“No.”
“That drive concerns a threat against her.”
“Then I’ll investigate it.”
“I am sure you’ll do your best.”
“Dominic.”
Maggie said his name quietly.
He looked at her.
“Stop.”
The old instinct rose in him—the one that heard orders as challenges.
Then he remembered a seventeen-year-old boy with coffee on his apron.
He exhaled.
And stopped.
Ortiz noticed.
Everybody noticed when Dominic Vescari stopped.
At the hospital, Curtis went directly into surgery.
Maggie waited long enough to know he was alive.
Then she turned to Dominic.
“St. Agnes.”
“No.”
“That was fast.”
“You should go home.”
“Wrong answer.”
“Maggie.”
She stepped closer.
“Someone threatened my diner, tried to run me over, and told me the reason is under my property. You no longer get to protect me with silence.”
Dominic’s gaze moved toward Anthony.
Anthony immediately walked thirty feet away and pretended to study a vending machine.
Maggie folded her arms.
“Well?”
Dominic sat.
The waiting room chair looked too small beneath him.
For a while, he said nothing.
Then: “St. Agnes Social Club burned in February of 1998.”
Maggie sat opposite him.
“I was twenty-five.”
His voice had changed.
Not softer.
Farther away.
“My father used the club for meetings. Weddings. Christenings. Business. It was supposedly neutral ground.”
“Supposedly.”
“Yes.”
He rubbed one thumb across the scar on his forearm without seeming to notice.
Maggie understood the burn now.
“There were thirty-one people inside when the fire started. Six died.”
She waited.
“My sister Isabella was one of them.”
Maggie’s anger went quiet.
“How old?”
“Nineteen.”
“I’m sorry.”
Dominic looked at the fluorescent lights overhead.
“The fire report said an overloaded circuit ignited paneling behind the bar.”
“You didn’t believe it.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I smelled gasoline.”
The words sat between them.
“I went back for Isabella,” he continued. “The ceiling came down before I reached the rear room.”
His fingers touched the scar again.
Maggie did not look away.
“Who did you think did it?”
“A man named Carlo Balestra. He was at war with my father.”
“And was he?”
“Dead three months later.”
Maggie absorbed that.
“Because of you?”
Dominic met her eyes.
He did not lie.
“I gave the order.”
The hospital seemed suddenly louder.
Phones ringing.
Shoes against tile.
A child crying somewhere beyond the double doors.
Maggie had known what he was.
Knowledge was different when it had a sentence.
Dominic watched the change in her face.
“You wanted the truth.”
“I did.”
“Do you still?”
She swallowed.
“Yes.”
Something like respect entered his expression.
“Then understand this. If Curtis is telling the truth, I may have killed the wrong man.”
At two in the morning, Maggie returned to the Bluebird with Dominic and Anthony.
She refused to sleep until they checked the basement.
The Bluebird basement smelled of detergent, old brick, onions, and sixty years of plumbing decisions.
Maggie switched on the bare bulbs.
“You said someone wants something underneath the diner,” Dominic said. “What is under this floor?”
“Concrete, I assume.”
“Anything older?”
“My dad bought the building in 1987. He said the basement had been storage before that.”
“What kind?”
“He didn’t know.”
They moved past shelves of canned tomatoes and paper goods.
At the rear wall, Dominic stopped.
“What?” Maggie asked.
He pointed.
The brick changed color halfway across the wall.
The left side was dark red, old mortar crumbling at the joints.
The right side was newer.
Maggie had looked at that wall for eight years and never really seen it.
Anthony tapped the newer bricks.
“Hollow.”
Maggie stared.
“No.”
Dominic looked at her.
“You knew?”
“I knew there used to be a coal chute. My father said it was sealed.”
“This is larger than a coal chute.”
They found a pry bar in the maintenance cabinet.
Maggie insisted on using it.
The first brick took ten minutes.
The second took four.
By the sixth, cold air breathed through the opening.
Not basement air.
Earth air.
Old water.
Rust.
Anthony widened the gap.
Behind the wall was an arched passage descending beneath the building.
Dominic shone his phone flashlight into it.
Brick walls.
Old iron piping.
A narrow concrete walkway beside a dry channel.
“What the hell is that?” Maggie whispered.
Dominic knew.
“Freight conduit.”
“You sound very sure.”
“My father used tunnels like this near the river.”
“For what?”
“You know what.”
“Humor me.”
“Things that did not belong on manifests.”
Anthony stepped through first.
The passage ran twenty yards before ending at a rusted steel door.
No handle.
No visible lock.
Maggie’s flashlight moved across the wall beside it.
There were letters scratched into the brick.
P.C.
Her breath caught.
“What?” Dominic asked.
“My father.”
“You’re sure?”
“Patrick Callahan. He marked everything. Tools. Coolers. Christmas decorations. Like someone was going to steal his extension cords.”
She crouched.
Beneath the initials, almost hidden by grime, was a date.
2-16-98.
Dominic stopped breathing.
The St. Agnes fire had happened February 17, 1998.
The day after Maggie’s father scratched his initials into the wall.
Anthony found the latch hidden behind a loose brick.
The steel door opened inward.
Inside was a room no larger than a pantry.
One chair.
A rotted desk.
Three empty metal shelves.
And a gray lockbox on the floor.
Maggie lifted it.
It was heavy.
The lock had rusted enough that Anthony broke it with the pry bar.
Inside were photographs.
Ledgers.
Old cassette tapes.
A city fire inspector’s badge.
And an envelope with Maggie’s father’s handwriting across the front.
DOMINIC VESCARI.
No one spoke.
Maggie handed it to him.
Dominic opened it carefully.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
His eyes moved down the page.
His face drained of color.
“What?” Maggie asked.
He did not answer.
She took the page from his hand.
Patrick Callahan had written only five lines.
Dominic—
If you are reading this, I failed to get it to you in time.
The St. Agnes fire was ordered by someone inside your own family.
Crowe paid for the gasoline, but he did not choose the target.
Do not trust your father.
Maggie looked up.
Dominic stood completely still.
Then the lights went out.
Anthony swore.
A second later, the smell reached them.
Smoke.
Not old smoke.
Fresh.
May you like
From the diner above.
Someone had set the Bluebird on fire while they were underneath it.
