The Night Teresa Died
Chapter 11 - The Night Teresa Died
Delphine watched the video three times before recognizing the voice. It belonged to Claudia Ashford. The woman she had seen laughing beside Teresa in the old photograph sounded hoarse and frightened on the recording, stripped of the careful ease Delphine remembered from a single brief encounter years before.
Miriam brought Claudia into her office with her own lawyer present. The older woman arrived in a charcoal suit and a coat that looked too warm for the weather. She sat very straight, like someone prepared to endure a difficult medical procedure without complaint. She acknowledged her voice on the recording immediately.
"I paid Marianne ten thousand dollars in 2014," Claudia said. "I delivered it the night Teresa died. I did it at Harold's request."
Delphine leaned forward. "You bought her silence?"
"I thought I was paying medical debts. That's what Harold told me. Marianne's husband had been gone for years, she was raising you alone, and Teresa had asked me once whether I could help her. It was a story that contained enough truth to make the rest believable."
"Why at night? Why the night Teresa died?"
Claudia looked toward the window. "Harold wanted a paper signed. He said the charitable trust would fall into disorder when Teresa was gone, and Marianne was the only person who could prevent an expensive court battle. I took a letter to the apartment. I did not know what the annex said. I should have read it. Marianne did. She put the money on the table and told me to leave."
"Did she keep it?" Delphine asked.
"She kept the envelope until morning. Then she returned it to our office. I have the receipt. She wrote on it that she would not sell somebody else's home to pay for her daughter's future."
Miriam requested the receipt and kept her expression neutral. Claudia continued, her voice losing a little of its stiffness. She had known Teresa was dying, but not that the death would come that night. Harold had called her after midnight with the news. When she asked what would happen to the second trust, he said it would be handled by people who understood business.
"I told myself it was none of my affair," Claudia said. "That sentence made a great many things possible in my life."
Delphine did not feel satisfaction. She had wanted a villain who had looked her mother in the eye and chosen to hurt her. What sat in front of her was a woman who had harmed people by accepting convenient explanations. Perhaps that was worse. It was easier to imagine a monster than an ordinary person polishing a cruelty until it resembled a favor.
"Were you the woman who came to Saint Agnes dressed as Mrs. Ferraro?" Delphine asked. Claudia closed her eyes. After a moment she said she was. She had wanted to leave the photograph where Delphine would find it and had been too cowardly to use her own name. She claimed the photograph was intended to warn her, not hurt her; Delphine told her that the words written on the back were threatening, whatever intention she chose to remember. Claudia accepted that without argument.
"I thought if she became frightened she would stop looking," Claudia said. "I thought stopping would keep her safe. It's what I told myself about Marianne, too. I seem to have mistaken frightening women for helping them my whole life."
Claudia's lawyer turned over a copy of the returned-payment receipt. On its back Marianne had written: Claudia believed him. I must stop believing that innocence is the same as ignorance. Delphine recognized the handwriting and had to set the paper down.
Delphine asked about her mother's appointment with Dr. Marr. Claudia remembered Marianne complaining of numbness in one hand and headaches, and said she had suggested a specialist who knew Harold's insurance network. Marianne had attended the consultation, then refused to share the records. Miriam obtained authorization to request what could still be released under the applicable medical rules. The available notes described stress-related symptoms and no finding of deliberate injury. They did not settle every fear Delphine had, but they gave her one thing she had lacked: a reason not to let a coincidence become another accusation.
She thought about how easy it would be to blame Rafael for everything, including the pneumonia that had taken her mother. The man had done enough harm without being given ownership of every sorrow.
Meanwhile, Elias met with a federal investigator regarding his family's financial operations. The investigator was interested in Rafael's construction companies and in a set of falsified invoices that appeared to pass through Ferraro Holdings. Elias did not know how much of the operation he could prove he had opposed. He refused to answer questions about his father's private conversations without counsel, but he supplied records voluntarily and agreed to return for a formal interview.
Afterward he sat on a bench outside the courthouse with a paper cup of coffee growing cold between his hands. He thought about his mother approaching death while his father calculated property values. About Marianne standing in an apartment refusing an envelope she could have used. About the many employees who had said yes when a Ferraro man asked for something and never been asked whether they wanted to.
His phone rang. It was his uncle.
"You are making a family matter public," Rafael said. He sounded more disappointed than angry. "Your father would be ashamed."
"My father had plenty to be ashamed of already."
Rafael laughed softly. "You think the girl cares about you? She's collecting documents to build a case. People in her position always want something."
"She wants her mother's name back. I didn't understand it at first. I do now."
"When the banks freeze your accounts, understanding won't pay your staff."
"Then I'll pay them from what I own personally. And I'll explain why the accounts were frozen."
Rafael was quiet. When he spoke again, the softness had disappeared. "Ask her who took the child called Nora out of Saint Agnes. Ask her whether Marianne ever told the whole story."
Elias called Delphine after hanging up. He told her what had been said without embellishment. She was on a bus, carrying a folder of copies and groceries for Ruth. Through the phone he heard the driver announce a stop.
"I'm going to find Nora," Delphine said. "I think she deserves to know people are still using her childhood to frighten someone."
May you like
The search was shorter than she expected. June had kept Christmas cards from Nora's mother, who lived in Connecticut under her married name. Nora was twenty-one, studying nursing, and agreed to meet in a public café after Delphine explained who she was. The young woman arrived carrying a backpack and looked at Delphine with strange familiarity.
"My mother says Marianne Aubrey saved our lives," Nora said. "But she said something else, too. The man who was looking for us never worked for Rafael Ferraro. He worked for your father."
