Chapter 2 - The Groom in the PhotographThe air inside the service basement smelled of damp concrete, wet stems, and ozone.
Luca held the photograph between two calloused fingers. His knuckles were pale, the gold signet ring on his pinky catching the dull fluorescent light overhead.
“What was your son’s name?” Luca asked. His voice had flattened out into a gravelly monotone.
“Julian,” the old woman whispered through chattering teeth. She pulled Luca’s wool coat closer around her thin collarbones. “Julian Vance. He was twenty-eight. He managed a commercial nursery in Gary, Indiana. He didn't know anything about syndicates, or family pacts, or the men who ran the docks.”
“Gary,” Luca repeated.
Daniel stepped forward, shining his penlight onto the gloss print.
The church in the background was a small red-brick chapel with a white steeple. Standing on the stone steps was Vanessa—six years younger, her dark hair falling past her bare shoulders, wearing an ivory silk knee-length dress instead of the couture gown she was currently wearing upstairs. Beside her stood a tall, slender young man with sandy hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a nervous, earnest smile.
Around his neck was an engraved silver locket.
Around Vanessa’s throat was an identical one.
“They were married on the eleventh of August,” the woman continued, tears tracking through the dirt smudges on her cheeks. “A civil license in Lake County. Three months later, Julian told me he was going to meet his father-in-law at a freight depot near the Calumet River to discuss an investment loan. He drove out in his pickup truck. That was the last time I ever saw him.”
Luca didn't blink. “And the police?”
“They found his truck two weeks later at the bottom of the slipway. Empty. The glove box was cleaned out. His wallet was gone. The county coroner told me the current probably swept him into Lake Michigan.”
She looked up at Luca with watery, sunken eyes that held the terrible, unblinking clarity of an unresolved grave.
“Then three weeks ago, my nephew took an order for two hundred centerpieces of white Ecuadorian roses. The delivery address was Prairie Avenue. The name on the account was Vanessa Bellini.”
She reached into her apron pocket again, pulling out a torn, carbon-copy delivery manifest.
“I took the route myself,” she whispered. “I didn't care about the money. I had to look at her face. I had to ask her where my son was buried.”
Luca looked down at the manifest. His eyes shifted toward the steel door leading to the service stairwell.
“And when you saw her?”
“She was coming down the basement hallway to inspect the centerpieces before the banquet,” the woman said. “When she saw me standing by the prep table, she dropped her glass. She screamed at me. She told me I was dead to her. She told me to take my boxes and get out before her family's men put me in the same canal Julian was in.”
The woman began to tremble harder, her chest hitching.
“I tried to grab her arm. I begged her. I said I just wanted to put flowers on his headstone. That was when she shoved me into the inner cold box. The latch clicked shut from the outside. That sweet girl, Natalie—she was carrying the extra ribbon from the pantry. She ran in to stop Vanessa from turning the padlock, and Vanessa kicked the storage ladder into her legs.”
Luca’s gaze dropped to the floor near the threshold.
Lying on the damp concrete were three scattered white roses, their petals crushed beneath an expensive, sharp heel print. Beside them lay a twisted silver hairpin that belonged to Natalie.
“Daniel,” Luca said softly.
“Yes, boss.”
“Take Mrs. Vance up to the second-floor library through the west service lift. Put her in the wing room. Turn the fireplace on. Have Dr. Harris examine her as soon as he finishes with Natalie.”
“And Miss Bellini, sir?”
May you like
Luca handed his coat to the old woman, smoothing the lapel over her shivering shoulders with a gentle, deliberate touch that seemed completely out of place on a man whose name made politicians sweat through their linen collars.
“Miss Bellini has guests to entertain,” Luca said, his voice dropping into a register that made Daniel step back half a pace. “Let her finish her dessert.”
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