The Woman in Red
Chapter 08 - The Woman in Red
Vanessa had always been careful about where she put her signature. She signed menus at charity lunches, thank-you notes to donors, holiday cards to business partners. Luca remembered teasing her that she would put her name on the sky if there were space. He had never considered what a woman who guarded her signature might be willing to authorize when no one was looking.
The repair invoice was not proof that Vanessa had killed Catherine. Miriam said so three times. It was evidence that Vanessa knew something about an SUV tied to the financial transfers, and that she had not told Luca about it. The distinction mattered, especially to a man who had spent too long treating suspicion as a verdict.
Under advice from her attorney, Vanessa agreed to provide a statement to investigators. Luca was not permitted to attend. She made him wait in the corridor outside the interview room, where a vending machine advertised coffee in faded colors. His world had once bent itself around his convenience. Here nobody cared whose suit he wore.
She emerged after two hours, exhausted and furious. “Nicholas told me the car scraped a loading dock. I paid the repair bill because the vehicle was used for events I managed. That's the truth.”
“Then why didn't you say so before?”
“Because you would have looked at me the way you're looking at me now.”
“Catherine died,” he said. “We aren't discussing whether I might have been upset with you.”
Vanessa pressed her lips together. “You loved her so much you let your cousin take her papers and answer her questions. Don't make me carry your guilt as well as mine.”
He flinched. The cruelty of the remark did not erase its accuracy. She had helped shut Eleanor out, written letters in his name and frightened Grace. He had permitted the arrangement by not asking whom his family missed and why.
“I won't put my guilt on you,” he replied. “You'll answer for what you did. I'll answer for what I did.”
For the first time she looked uncertain what to do with him.
The investigators had obtained more than her statement. Pier Seven's records showed that Nicholas ordered the SUV washed and repaired after the crash. Vanessa had approved the invoice. She had also received a considerable sum from a Bellini-controlled company shortly after the funeral. She called it consulting income. The description on the transfer read *confidentiality and crisis management*.
When Miriam told Luca, he did not ask how much. The number could not make Catherine less dead or his daughter less afraid. He asked only whether it was enough to establish a credible case for fraud and obstruction. Miriam said it was enough to continue investigating, not enough to pronounce judgment.
Meanwhile, Eleanor spent an afternoon with Grace in the garden room. The child pulled out a battered photo album and asked about the first time her parents met. Eleanor told her the real story, which Catherine had enjoyed embarrassing Luca with: he had mistaken a volunteer for the director of a food program and spent twenty minutes explaining fundraising to someone who had organized half the event.
“Mommy thought he was silly?” Grace asked.
“She thought he was handsome and silly. Very dangerous combination.”
Grace laughed. It was an ordinary child's laugh, quick and surprised. Eleanor felt tears prick her eyes. For years she had imagined that laugh growing older without her.
“Grandma,” Grace said after a while, “does it make Mommy sad if we laugh?”
“No, sweetheart. I don't think love works that way.”
“Then why does Daddy never laugh when we're talking about her?”
Grace was old enough to remember the way her mother used to sing off-key while finding lost socks, but young enough to worry the memory might fade. She feared that forgetting a voice was a kind of disloyalty. Eleanor decided then that they would write the stories down. Not the polished family anecdotes, but the silly ones, the ones that belonged to an actual woman.
“Because he's learning. Some people are very slow at learning what matters.”
Luca heard the last sentence from the doorway and accepted it as a fair assessment.
That night he asked Emily to take the following morning off. She had been managing Grace's fears as well as the household without having been hired or paid to carry that burden. Emily surprised him by saying no. “I have a dentist appointment next week. I'll take the time then. Today Grace wanted to bake with your mother, and I'm not missing it.”
He smiled. “You're allowed a life, Emily.”
“So are you,” she said. Then, with a steadiness Catherine would have admired, “It might be worth trying one.”
On Thursday Nicholas appeared in the mansion driveway. Security called Luca rather than allowing him through. He came out alone and stood several feet from his cousin, the man who had held his wedding rings, sat with him through his father's final illness and arranged Catherine's funeral.
“Do you intend to ruin us both?” Nicholas asked.
“I intend to find out what happened.”
“You've always benefited from not knowing. Catherine couldn't accept that some things are unpleasant and necessary.”
“Stolen shelter money wasn't necessary.”
Nicholas gave a bitter laugh. “You don't know half of what your company did to keep you comfortable.”
Luca felt his skin go cold. Nicholas had finally said the thing Catherine was trying to tell him in her unfinished letter. This was not just one dishonest cousin and one opportunistic woman. Luca had created a business where anyone could justify anything so long as the money arrived and no one troubled him with details.
“I'll have the books examined,” Luca said. “All of them.”
“Then you won't like the answers.”
“Perhaps I deserve not to.”
Nicholas turned away. Before he entered his car, he said, “Ask Eleanor what she kept from the police. She hasn't been telling you everything either.”
The remark might have been a diversion. Luca knew that. Yet later, when he told Eleanor, the old woman lowered her gaze.
For a long while she said nothing. Then she opened a kitchen drawer and removed a narrow white envelope with Catherine's name on it.
“I was afraid you'd take this to Nicholas,” she whispered. “And I was afraid I was right to be afraid.”
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Inside was a note Catherine had written to Eleanor on the afternoon she died. It contained one line Luca had never been meant to read without hearing its explanation:
*If Luca refuses to stop them, I will take Grace and go.*
