Chapter 4 - The Woman in the Photograph
The bomb squad arrived at 10:16 p.m.
By then, the guests had been moved into a secure section of the grounds, the mansion's perimeter was locked down, and every employee was being interviewed. The specialists examined the gift box and the device beneath the table, then ordered everyone to remain outside the ballroom while they worked.
I didn't ask them for details I wasn't qualified to understand. I asked only one question.
"Can you make it safe?"
"That's what we're here to determine," the lead specialist replied.
I left the work to them and went back to my study.
The woman on the phone had given me no name, no location, and no proof. Eleven years of grief could make a man hear what he desperately wanted to hear.
I needed evidence.
I searched the old records from Elena's accident. The police report said her car had left the road during a storm. The vehicle had burned, and identification had supposedly been confirmed through personal effects recovered from the scene.
The report had been signed by Detective Robert Kessler.
Kessler had retired three years ago.
I called him.
He answered on the fourth ring.
"Moretti. It's late."
"Did you investigate my sister's accident?"
Silence.
"That was a long time ago."
"Did you investigate it?"
"Yes."
"Did you identify the body?"
Another pause.
"Your family confirmed the identification."
"That wasn't my question."
Kessler exhaled.
"Dante, you need to let the past stay where it is."
I stood.
"You're going to answer me."
"No," he said quietly. "I'm going to tell you something I should have told you years ago. The body was badly burned. We relied on the effects recovered from the vehicle and information supplied by your family. I never personally confirmed her identity."
"Who supplied the information?"
"Marcus Bellini."
The name landed like a fist.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because your father came to see me before the report was finalized. He told me the family had already suffered enough and that reopening the case would destroy what remained of it."
"My father died twelve years ago."
"I know."
"Then who paid you to keep quiet?"
Kessler didn't answer.
I heard a door close on his end of the line.
"Someone's coming," he whispered. "Don't call me again."
The connection ended.
I stared at the phone until Victor entered the room.
"Boss, we've got a problem. Marcus's phone was found in his car, but the car itself was moved shortly before the party. The garage cameras show someone driving it out and bringing it back."
"Who?"
"We're checking."
"Any sign of Marcus?"
"Not yet. But we found a staff member who says he left through the service corridor during the blackout."
"Then why hasn't anyone seen him outside?"
Victor hesitated.
"Because the exterior cameras were disabled too."
I told him about the phone call and the old accident report.
He listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he said, "You believe Elena is alive."
"I believe someone wants me to believe it."
"That sounds like a distinction without a difference."
"It's the only distinction keeping me sane."
Victor placed a folder on my desk.
"We found this in Marcus's office. It was hidden behind a loose panel in his filing cabinet."
Inside was a photograph.
Elena stood beside a lake, wearing a white sweater and the silver pendant our mother had given her on her eighteenth birthday. She looked older than she had in my memories, but there was no mistaking her face.
On the back, someone had written a date from six weeks earlier.
Beneath it were four words.
SHE REMEMBERS EVERYTHING NOW.
I felt the room shrink around me.
"Where was this taken?"
"We're trying to identify the location."
I turned the photograph over again.
There was a small detail I'd missed. In the reflection of the window behind Elena, a second figure stood several feet away.
A man.
His face was partially obscured, but I recognized the posture, the broad shoulders, the way he held his head slightly forward.
My father.
Impossible.
He had been dead for twelve years.
I enlarged the photograph on my computer. The reflection remained blurry, but the man's left hand was visible.
He wore a signet ring bearing the Moretti family crest.
My father's ring had been buried with him.
Unless it hadn't.
I remembered the funeral, the closed coffin, and the explanation that the damage from his illness had made a private viewing necessary. Marcus had handled every arrangement. I had been too devastated to question anything.
Two deaths. Two closed caskets. Two reports accepted because the people I trusted told me not to ask questions.
"Victor," I said, "find out who arranged my father's funeral."
He nodded.
Before he could leave, the study door opened.
Clara stood in the doorway, pale and trembling. Sophie held her hand.
"I know I was told to stay with security," Clara said, "but Sophie won't stop asking for you."
I crouched to the child's height.
"What's wrong, sweetheart?"
Sophie glanced at her mother, then reached into the pocket of her yellow dress.
She pulled out a tiny silver object.
My blood went cold.
It was a pendant shaped like a small bird.
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
"Uncle Marcus dropped it when he came into the kitchen."
I took it carefully.
On the back, scratched into the silver, were the initials E.M.
Elena Moretti.
Sophie looked up at me.
"He told the lady on the phone that the bird had to come home before midnight."
My throat tightened.
"What lady?"
"The one who was crying."
Clara knelt beside her daughter.
"Sophie, when did you hear that?"
"In the kitchen. Before the party. The lady said she didn't want to hurt anybody anymore."
I stared at the pendant.
Elena had owned a matching necklace when she was a teenager. It had been a gift from our mother, and she'd worn it until the night she disappeared.
"Did you see the woman's face?"
Sophie nodded.
"She looked like the lady in your picture."
I looked at the photograph again.
Elena's face stared back at me.
For eleven years, I'd mourned a ghost.
Now I had a photograph, a pendant, and a five-year-old witness telling me the dead woman had been crying in my kitchen.
Then Victor's radio crackled.
"Boss, we've identified the catering worker. Her employment documents are false."
"Name?"
"She signed in as Laura Bennett."
"Real name?"
Victor paused.
"Elena Moretti."
The radio hissed.
May you like
"She's still on the property."
And somewhere in the mansion, a door slammed.
