269.🗝️ THE MAID WHO SPOKE ITALIAN

Chapter 06 - The Girl in the Red Coat

Vanessa had slept in the guest suite rather than leave the Moretti estate after the ruined engagement dinner. By noon she was dressed in a cream silk blouse and dark trousers, talking to someone on the phone beside the library window. She stopped speaking when Emma entered with Luca.

“Why are you still here?” Vanessa asked Emma.

“Because I have something to show you.”

Emma laid the photograph on a side table. Vanessa looked at it, and her fingers flew involuntarily to the bracelet on her wrist.

“That's old,” she said.

“Eighteen years old. My mother is the woman holding you.”

“She was helping people outside. Anyone could have been in her arms.”

“You told me you'd never been to Bell House.”

“I said I'd never been involved with it.”

Luca came to the edge of the rug. “Vanessa, did your father do the electrical work?”

She gave him a look of exhausted contempt. “Of course he did. He built half the respectable neighborhoods in New Haven. He also paid fines when inspectors found things they didn't like. That's how construction works.”

“Not when a woman dies,” Emma said.

Vanessa's eyes snapped to hers. “You think I don't remember that woman? I hear the sound of those sirens whenever a smoke alarm goes off. I was a child.”

“Then why pretend you knew nothing?”

“Because nobody in this family forgives weakness. Not mine and certainly not yours.”

That was more truth than Emma expected. Vanessa sank onto the arm of a chair, folded her hands together, and stared at a place on the carpet where the sunlight made a pale rectangle.

“My father went bankrupt twice,” she said. “My mother left him. Dominic gave him contracts when no bank would lend him a dollar. Do you know what it's like to spend your entire adult life owing someone for letting your family keep its home?”

Emma thought of Bianca sewing hems after midnight. “Yes.”

Vanessa looked up sharply, irritated to have lost even that distinction.

“Dominic promised the sale would settle his old debts,” she went on. “A developer wants the building. It isn't a palace. It costs more to maintain than it brings in.”

“And the women living there?” Luca asked.

“There's a relocation plan.”

“Have you seen it?”

Vanessa reached for a leather folder and handed him a glossy document. Helen, who had just joined them, studied the address listed for the proposed new facility. It was a shuttered motel outside Bridgeport, forty minutes from most public transportation.

“Some of these women work nights in New Haven,” Emma said. “Some have children in local schools.”

Vanessa threw up a hand. “Then perhaps you can build them something better with your housekeeper's salary.”

“No,” Emma answered. “But at least I won't call that plan a favor.”

Luca did not intervene. It was Emma's answer, and he let it stand.

Helen found a more troubling detail in the transfer documents. The proposed buyer was Elm Harbor Development, a corporation formed six months earlier. One of its controlling interests belonged to Bellini Holdings. Another was a company owned by Dominic Moretti's longtime attorney.

“Your uncle was selling the foundation property to himself,” she told Luca later. “Through layers of companies. Vanessa's family would take a portion of the proceeds, and the Moretti Foundation would be left with little enough to claim financial necessity.”

“That explains the false membership meeting,” Luca said.

“Partly. But why the hurry?”

They learned the answer from Evelyn. A city preservation committee had agreed to review Bell House for landmark status the following month. Its architectural value was modest, but several decades of charitable use could qualify it for protection. Once protected, redevelopment would be slower and far more expensive.

“Dominic needs the building empty before the hearing,” Emma said.

Helen nodded. “And he needs the forged sale to appear settled before anyone asks questions.”

At four, Luca took Emma aside in the scullery. Staff members had begun moving around the house with the strained caution of people who know a family argument is spreading but have no idea whether their jobs will survive it.

“I've arranged for your wages to continue while Helen sorts this out,” he said. “You're not required to stay on duty. If you prefer to go home, a driver will take you.”

“I can drive myself.”

“Of course.”

She looked at him. “You're treating me differently.”

“I should have been treating you differently before.”

“That's not what I meant.”

He leaned against the counter, suddenly looking as tired as any man who had been awake all night. “I asked you to trust me while I was accepting my uncle's version of everything. You had better reasons to suspect him, and I didn't even know enough to listen.”

Emma washed a glass that was already clean. “I came here hoping to find out what happened to my mother. I didn't tell you. So we both have things to answer for.”

“I knew she was honest,” he said. “At least, I thought I knew that from the way you work.”

“You can be honest and still have secrets.”

He seemed to want to say more. Instead he stepped away and let her finish the glass. That small restraint, in a house where his wishes usually became instructions, made Emma pause.

Before she left, Vanessa found her beside the staff lockers.

“Don't let Luca make you the heroine of this,” she said. “He gets bored with causes. He goes back to his business and leaves everyone else to clean up.”

“Perhaps,” Emma replied. “But that doesn't make your part in this innocent.”

Vanessa's mouth tightened. “You think I'm the only one who signed things she regrets?”

She took an envelope from her bag and slid it into Emma's palm. It contained a photocopy of a letter on Moretti Foundation stationery, signed by Luca himself seven years before. In one paragraph he had granted Dominic full discretion to manage and dispose of foundation assets.

“Ask him why he gave my future father-in-law the power to sell the building,” Vanessa said.