Chapter 5 - FRANCESCA'S LAST AUDIT
Dante did not speak when Emma told him what Lydia Castillo had remembered about the woman who founded the fund. He was standing outside the hospital's family waiting room, staring at a photograph of his mother on his phone. In the picture, Francesca Moretti wore a plain cardigan, her hair pinned loosely above her neck. She was holding a newborn wrapped in a yellow blanket. Emma recognized neither the child nor the place.
"She hated photographs where people posed," Dante said at last. "She said you could learn more from the moment before someone knew a camera was there."
"Was she ill before she died?"
"She'd been tired. She had fainted once at a board dinner. The doctors said her heart was failing. We arranged consultations. She refused to stop working."
He locked his phone. "I spent years blaming her stubbornness. Maybe that was easier than asking whether something else happened."
Emma wanted to reassure him, but there was nothing useful to say. There was a difference between suspecting a death was suspicious and proving a person had been harmed. She had learned that distinction watching her mother defend numbers everybody else dismissed.
Detective Shah agreed to request Francesca's medical and estate records through appropriate channels. Dante voluntarily released documents under his control, including the foundation's board minutes for the year before his mother's death. They were incomplete. Two meetings had no recorded minutes, and a third included an unexplained vote to replace the outside auditing firm.
"Who proposed that?" Emma asked when Dante showed her the copy his attorney permitted him to share.
"Alexander Romano's father served as an adviser then," Dante said. "But the proposal was submitted by our own treasurer, Peter Vale. My mother voted against it."
"Did anyone else vote against it?"
"One trustee. His name was Nicholas Duran. He died six years ago."
"Could his family have his papers?"
"Possibly. I'll pass that suggestion to Shah."
For once, he did not reach for the phone to order someone across the city. Emma noticed. The old habit had not vanished; he simply seemed to be working to interrupt it.
Her mother was recovering enough to complain about bland food again. Teresa listened to the account of Francesca's audit with a grave expression. She had met the woman three times, twice at the trust's old office and once at a dinner where she was supposed to thank donors for funding the children's travel program.
"Francesca asked me to stay afterward," Teresa said. "She wanted to understand why approved grants were not matching the annual totals. I showed her examples. She took notes in a blue book."
"Do you know what happened to the book?" Emma asked.
"No. But she sent me a postcard after we met. She wrote that she intended to continue asking questions and wouldn't use my name without permission."
"Did she keep that promise?"
"As far as I know. I received a thank-you note two months later. Then I heard she'd died."
Teresa reached for her water. Her hands shook from exhaustion. Emma waited until she had finished drinking before asking the next question.
"Do you have the postcard?"
Teresa looked out the window. "I think I put it with your baby pictures. I couldn't throw it away. It was the first time somebody important had believed me."
They found it in another box at Teresa's apartment. Francesca's neat handwriting occupied most of the back. She thanked Teresa for bringing her concerns to the board and wrote that the numbers were troubling. At the bottom, beneath a sketch of a rose, was a sentence Emma read aloud twice: THE BLUE BOOK IS NOT THE ONLY COPY.
The postcard did not say where the other copy might be. It was still enough to give investigators a new direction.
On Friday evening, Marco reported that Peter Vale's traffic-stop photograph had been confirmed through fingerprint comparison. The man was alive, and the false death record had been supported by documents submitted to a county clerk years earlier. A former administrator at the clerk's office was being questioned about those filings. Peter himself remained missing.
Alexander Romano, meanwhile, issued a statement through an attorney denying involvement in any threats or misappropriations. He acknowledged a consulting relationship with Harborlight Administration but said it involved routine business development and had ended before the disputed transfer.
"He's putting distance between himself and the money," Dante said.
"Or telling the truth about his role," Emma replied.
Dante glanced at her. "You really don't intend to let me jump to conclusions."
"You pay lawyers a fortune to stop you doing that. I'm free."
He smiled despite himself.
Emma's bruises had begun turning green at the edges. She no longer wore makeup to hide them. The first time she went into a pharmacy with her face uncovered, a stranger stared, then looked away quickly. Emma had spent months living as though being seen were the most dangerous thing that could happen to her. Now she found the discomfort oddly bearable. She had documentation of what occurred. She had said it aloud. The world had not ended.
She had not yet decided whether she would ever return to the mansion. Dante had offered her the job with full pay while she recovered, then told her she could leave with severance and a reference based on her actual work. She requested written terms and a lawyer's review. He agreed without argument.
On Saturday, Mrs. Bell invited Emma to a meeting with several former and current household workers. They gathered in a church basement in Queens, a place none of the Moretti family controlled. Carla, a young kitchen porter, described being docked pay after Victoria accused her of scratching a serving tray. A driver said his schedule had been altered to keep him from medical appointments. A gardener reported that his passport had been held in the mansion's safe for weeks after he requested it back. Some allegations were new. Others had been whispered around the kitchen for months.
Emma listened, growing angrier with every account. Nobody had been hurt in exactly the same way. That, she realized, was how the system had survived: each person had been told their suffering was a private exception.
"What do we do?" Carla asked.
Mrs. Bell looked toward Emma as though expecting an answer. Emma shook her head. "We need advice from someone who isn't paid by the Morettis. I can help make appointments. But nobody should have to join a complaint just because the rest of us want one."
They agreed to seek a labor advocate and discuss collective options. The meeting ended without a dramatic speech. Emma considered that a success.
Later, her phone rang. The caller identified herself as Celia Grant, Victoria's personal assistant. Her voice was breathless, and she said she did not have long.
"I didn't open the rear door," Celia said before Emma could answer. "I know what people think, but I didn't."
"You should tell Detective Shah."
"I will. I just need you to understand something about the money. The transfer agreement Victoria kept wasn't the original. It was a replacement copy."
"Where's the original?"
"Peter took it."
Emma gripped the phone. "Have you seen him?"
"Yes. Last week. He met Victoria at her apartment, not the mansion. She was crying afterward."
"Why?"
"He told her that if she didn't cooperate, he would expose what happened to Francesca."
Emma felt a chill. "What did happen?"
"I don't know. Victoria said Peter was lying. Then she burned a letter. I saw the envelope before it caught fire. It was addressed to a man called Michael Bellamy."
"Do you know who he is?"
"No. But Victoria told me to find his family. She said she'd been searching for him for years."
A door slammed on Celia's end of the call. She lowered her voice.
"There's something else. Anton Kessler came to see her after you found the papers. She asked him whether the people at the back gate could be called off. He told her it was too late. She seemed genuinely terrified."
"Where are you?" Emma asked.
"I can't tell you."
"Then tell Shah. Please. She can arrange a safe way to take your statement."
"I know."
Celia hesitated. "Emma, I saw Victoria hit you once before. In the corridor near the guest rooms. I said nothing. I'm sorry."
Emma closed her eyes. The apology had been a long time coming, and she did not know what to do with it.
"Tell the truth now," she said. "That's what you can do."
The call ended. Emma immediately shared the details with Shah, preserving the call log and notes. Two hours later, a police liaison confirmed Celia had made contact through an attorney and was arranging an interview.
At midnight, Dante called with news about Michael Bellamy. He had been the foundation's independent medical adviser during Francesca's last year. His license had been suspended after an unrelated recordkeeping investigation, and he had vanished from public view fourteen years earlier. Some papers described him as retired. Others suggested he had left the country.
"Is he alive?" Emma asked.
"That's what investigators are trying to establish."
There was a long silence. Emma heard him turn a page.
"What is it?" she asked.
"My mother's last appointment was with Bellamy. I thought she saw him about her heart. But the booking record says she requested a review of patient death certificates connected to the trust."
Emma pictured Francesca in her cardigan, holding a child, asking questions with her neat little blue book. A woman who had once stood on the board of a powerful family charity had tried to count the people who had disappeared from its records.
"Dante," she said carefully, "what if the money wasn't just stolen? What if they used the foundation to pretend some patients had died when they hadn't?"
He did not answer at once.
Then he said, "If that's true, we need to find them before anyone else does."
May you like
Emma looked toward Teresa, sleeping in the next room. For the first time, she understood why a man would threaten a sick woman over paperwork. Money could be replaced. A name erased from a record could hide a living witness for years.
And somebody had spent a very long time keeping the witnesses apart.
