Chapter 3 - EIGHT YEARS OF ROUTES
The armored SUV sat three spaces away from the sedan.
From the outside, the difference did not look dramatic. Both vehicles were black. Both were polished. Both belonged to the kind of man whose transportation was treated as part of his security rather than part of his lifestyle.
But Ray knew the difference down to the sound of each door closing.
“Friday nights, the SUV,” he said.
Luca stood at the entrance to the underground garage while Gino’s men searched the sedan.
Ray had refused to go home.
Lena was furious about it, but she understood why. She stood beside him with her arms crossed, making it clear to everyone that if his glucose dropped one more point, she would personally drag him out of the Moretti house.
I stayed near the elevator because Luca had told me to remember everything.
That was proving harder than it sounded.
Memory did not arrive in order.
It came in flashes.
Vanessa telling the valet to move the SUV to the lower level.
A stranger carrying a garment bag through the garage.
Ray’s dinner under the heat lamp.
A black thermos on the kitchen counter that nobody claimed.
The sedan being polished twice.
Things that looked meaningless while they happened were beginning to form a shape.
Gino crouched beside the sedan’s open driver door.
“We found a control module spliced into the electrical system.”
Luca’s expression did not change.
“What does it do?”
“Our mechanic says it can interrupt the ignition remotely.”
Ray swore under his breath.
Lena looked at him. “In English.”
“They could stop the car.”
“While he was driving?”
“Possibly.”
Gino straightened. “The module was installed recently. Wiring is clean. Whoever did it knew what he was doing.”
Luca looked toward Vanessa.
She had been brought downstairs under guard, though no one had touched her. Her red silk dress looked absurd under the fluorescent garage lights.
“I knew nothing about that,” she said.
“Darren installed it while you watched.”
“I watched him put something under the seat. I didn’t know what it was.”
“You paid the worker who removed Ray’s medical kit.”
“I paid him to clean the car.”
“You arranged a replacement driver.”
“I arranged transportation.”
“You told that driver Ray would be sick.”
Vanessa’s voice cracked. “I told him Ray had a health condition.”
Luca took one step toward her.
“Who told you that?”
She looked away.
“Vanessa.”
“My father.”
Ray stared at her.
“Your father knows my medical history?”
She didn’t answer.
Luca’s face went very still.
Victor Bellini had attended family dinners. Business meetings. Charity galas. He was the kind of man who remembered birthdays and sent expensive wine when someone’s mother died.
Apparently, he also kept track of a driver’s diabetes.
“Why?” Luca asked.
Vanessa looked at him with tears in her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“That answer is finished.”
“I swear I don’t know everything.”
“Then tell me the part you do know.”
She pressed her lips together.
Luca turned away from her.
It was somehow worse than yelling.
He looked at Ray. “Take me through tonight.”
Ray blinked. “Boss?”
“From the moment you arrived.”
Ray thought.
“Picked you up at the office at five-thirty. We came straight here. I parked the SUV by the front entrance because we were supposed to leave again at ten.”
“What happened next?”
“Miss Bellini told me it ruined the photographs.”
Vanessa muttered, “It did.”
Luca ignored her.
Ray continued. “She had me move it to the side court. Twenty minutes later, she said the florist truck needed that space, so I moved it to the garage.”
“Which level?”
“Upper.”
Gino frowned. “It’s on lower now.”
Ray looked at him. “I didn’t move it there.”
Every head turned.
Gino spoke into his radio. “Check access logs.”
Luca asked Ray, “After the garage?”
“Florist. Boutique. Back here. Then she sent me to pick up Mr. Bellini’s cigars from his club.”
Vanessa said, “My father forgot them.”
Ray shook his head. “Club said he hadn’t ordered any.”
She stared at him.
“You didn’t mention that.”
“You didn’t ask.”
A small sound escaped Lena. It might have been a laugh.
Ray went on. “I came back at eight twenty. Asked kitchen for dinner. Before I could eat, Miss Bellini sent me upstairs for her shawl.”
“I couldn’t leave the table.”
“You weren’t at the table. Guests were still arriving.”
Vanessa’s face tightened.
“When did you start feeling sick?” Luca asked.
“A little after eight forty. Sweaty. Shaky.”
“Why didn’t you check your glucose?”
Ray looked embarrassed. “Meter was in my coat. Glucose kit was in the car. I thought I could finish the errand first.”
Lena closed her eyes. “Raymond.”
“I know.”
She touched his arm anyway.
Gino returned from the security desk carrying a printed access sheet.
“The SUV was moved from upper to lower at 7:52.”
“By whom?” Luca asked.
“Key fob assigned to event security.”
“Name?”
Gino looked at the sheet.
“Temporary credential. Issued by Vanessa’s coordinator.”
Vanessa exhaled sharply. “I had dozens of event people here.”
“Not anymore,” Gino said. “They’ve all been stopped at the property exits.”
Luca looked at him. “Find who used it.”
Gino nodded.
I remembered the black thermos.
The thought arrived so suddenly I spoke without thinking.
“Ray, did you have coffee tonight?”
He looked at me. “No.”
“Anything from a thermos?”
“No.”
Vanessa’s eyes moved toward me.
Too fast.
Luca saw it.
“Nora.”
“There was a black thermos in the kitchen,” I said. “Vanessa brought it in around seven.”
Vanessa stared. “I did not.”
“You asked me whose it was.”
“That doesn’t mean I brought it in.”
I thought harder.
She was right about one thing. I had not seen her carry it through the door.
But I had seen something else.
“You told me not to wash it.”
Luca’s attention sharpened.
“Why?”
I looked at Vanessa. “She said it belonged to the driver.”
Ray frowned. “Not mine.”
Gino asked, “Where is it?”
“In the kitchen. Unless someone moved it.”
He sent a guard upstairs.
Vanessa’s voice became impatient. “You are treating every object in the house like evidence because Nora remembers a thermos.”
Luca looked at her. “A thermos you identified as belonging to Ray when Ray says it doesn’t.”
“I assumed.”
“Like you assumed he would be sick.”
She stopped speaking.
The guard returned holding the black thermos with a dish towel wrapped around it.
I recognized it immediately.
“Found behind the recycling bins,” he said.
Vanessa shook her head. “Anyone could have put it there.”
Gino took it. “We’ll have it tested.”
Ray looked uneasy. “Boss, I never drank from it.”
“I know.”
“What if someone wanted it to look like I did?”
That was the first question that made Luca turn fully toward him.
Ray rubbed the back of his neck.
“If I’d been found confused and there was some strange drink in a thermos everyone thought was mine…”
“They could call you drunk,” I finished.
Vanessa’s face changed.
The exact word she had used.
Drunk.
Not sick.
Not confused.
Drunk.
Before anyone had checked Ray.
Luca looked at her.
“You didn’t say he looked ill.”
Vanessa said nothing.
“You called him a drunk.”
“He was slurring.”
“So you knew what story you wanted the room to believe.”
“That is not fair.”
“No,” Luca said. “It isn’t.”
He turned away.
Gino’s radio crackled.
A voice spoke quickly from the lower garage.
Gino listened, then looked at Luca.
“We found the person who moved the SUV.”
“Who?”
“The event-security temp. Name is Owen Price.”
“Bring him.”
A few minutes later, a frightened twenty-two-year-old in a black suit was escorted toward us. He looked like he might faint before anyone asked him a question.
Luca kept his voice calm.
“Why did you move my SUV?”
Owen swallowed. “A woman told me to.”
“Which woman?”
Owen looked at Vanessa.
She immediately shook her head.
“Not her,” he said.
Vanessa visibly relaxed.
Then Owen continued.
“An older woman. Dark hair. Maybe fifty. She said she was Mr. Bellini’s assistant.”
Gino and Luca exchanged a look.
“Name?” Gino asked.
“She gave me a badge. Teresa Vale.”
Ray’s face changed.
Luca noticed. “You know her.”
Ray looked toward him slowly.
“Boss, Teresa Vale isn’t Victor Bellini’s assistant.”
“Then who is she?”
Ray hesitated.
“For six months, she was your mother’s private nurse.”
Luca went completely still.
His mother had been dead for nineteen years.
I knew that much from household photographs and the way people lowered their voices when they mentioned her.
Ray continued carefully.
“She disappeared three days before Mrs. Moretti died.”
Vanessa’s face drained of color.
Luca turned toward her.
“You know that name.”
“No.”
“You reacted before Ray explained it.”
“I reacted because everyone is staring at me.”
Luca stepped closer.
“Vanessa.”
She backed away.
“I don’t know her.”
Gino’s phone rang.
He answered, listened, then held the phone away from his ear.
“Boss. We searched Caleb’s car.”
Luca’s gaze stayed on Vanessa. “And?”
“They found an envelope under the spare tire.”
“What’s in it?”
Gino’s expression hardened.
“Copies of your mother’s medical records.”
The garage seemed to contract around us.
Luca’s voice dropped.
“From when?”
“The final week of her life.”
Ray stared at Vanessa.
I did too.
Because her fear no longer looked like fear of being caught arranging a driver.
It looked older.
May you like
Deeper.
As if tonight’s plan had opened a door she had spent years making sure Luca never knew existed.
