Chapter 6 - THE SIGNATURE OF A DEAD WOMAN
Victoria Moretti stared at the signature for so long that Ava began to worry.
The handwriting was perfect.
The long V.
The narrow loop in the M.
Even the slight downward slant Victoria developed when she was tired.
But the date made it impossible.
Eight months after the crash, Victoria had been lying in a rehabilitation hospital in Portugal, struggling to walk without assistance.
“That's my signature,” Victoria said.
Ava looked at her.
“You signed it?”
“No.”
“But—”
“Someone reproduced it.”
Arthur took the red notebook from Manny and examined the entry.
“This isn't a legal authorization. It's Ruth's handwritten copy of one she saw. We need the original.”
Victoria nodded.
“Which may be inside those crates.”
Manny looked toward the harbor.
“Ruth said the signature was the first thing that bothered her.”
“Why didn't she report it?” Ava asked.
“She did.”
“To whom?”
Manny met Victoria's eyes.
“Conrad.”
Victoria closed her eyes.
Of course.
The man controlling the fraud had been responsible for investigating it.
Ava turned another page.
There were nineteen names followed by amounts that had never reached their intended recipients.
A dockworker who lost two fingers in an accident.
A widow whose husband died unloading containers.
A forklift operator forced into retirement after a spinal injury.
Ava recognized three of them.
They were people her mother had once invited to holiday dinners.
“Did Conrad know all these families?” she asked.
Victoria nodded.
“He knew every one of them.”
That frightened Ava more than the numbers.
Conrad hadn't stolen from strangers.
He had stolen from people whose children he had watched grow up.
Arthur carefully photographed each page with Ava's permission before returning the notebook to Manny.
“We shouldn't remove the original without Ruth,” he explained. “She's the one who can establish how these entries were made.”
For the first time that evening, Ava was glad to hear someone insist on doing things properly.
They left the warehouse and drove toward a twenty-four-hour diner near the waterfront.
Noah remained outside to coordinate with the attorneys.
Arthur went to a booth in the back to review the transfer schedule.
Victoria and Ava sat across from each other beneath fluorescent lights.
The waitress brought coffee.
Victoria stared at the chipped white mug.
“I used to come here with your grandfather.”
Ava traced a crack in the table.
“You keep talking about him.”
“He would have known what to do.”
“Would he?”
Victoria looked up.
Ava continued.
“Because when I told you Conrad was different when you weren't around, you told me he was trying to become part of our family.”
Victoria lowered her eyes.
“I remember.”
“He used to ask me questions about my inheritance. Who signed the trust papers. Whether Grandpa had ever given me a key to the old safe.”
“I didn't know that.”
“I tried telling you.”
Victoria's eyes filled.
“You did.”
Ava leaned back.
“I don't need you to pretend you were a perfect mother.”
“I wasn't.”
“I need you to stop treating me like a little girl you can protect by keeping secrets.”
Victoria nodded slowly.
Then she removed the watch from her wrist.
It was an old stainless-steel watch with a scratched face.
Ava recognized it.
Her grandfather had worn it while teaching her to ride that blue bicycle.
“I had this on the plane,” Victoria said.
Ava looked at the damaged glass.
“It survived?”
“The bracelet broke during the crash. A nurse kept it with my belongings.”
Victoria placed it on the table.
“The hands stopped at 4:18. I stared at them for months because I couldn't remember what happened just before the impact.”
Ava touched the watch.
“What do you remember now?”
“An unusual vibration. The pilot telling someone the instruments weren't behaving correctly. Then the sound of metal tearing.”
She stopped.
Her hands trembled.
Ava had never seen her mother frightened like this.
Victoria took a breath.
“I was flying to meet an independent auditor in Lisbon. Six weeks earlier, I'd discovered suspicious transfers from our employee reserve accounts.”
Ava sat straighter.
“You already suspected Conrad?”
“I suspected someone inside the company. Conrad insisted the transfers were temporary accounting adjustments.”
“And you believed him.”
“I wanted to.”
Victoria looked ashamed.
“I was afraid of what it would mean if the man I married was stealing from the people who trusted us.”
Ava looked at the red notebook on the table.
“Maybe you should have been more afraid of what would happen if you ignored it.”
Victoria nodded.
“Yes.”
For several minutes, neither spoke.
Then Ava asked the question she had been carrying since the ballroom.
“Why didn't you come to me when you returned to New Jersey?”
Victoria's expression changed.
“Conrad knew I was alive.”
Ava went still.
“He knew?”
“Before Arthur arranged the meeting at Port Liberty.”
“How?”
“Someone from the medical facility contacted a number associated with the company. Conrad intercepted the inquiry. Later, he arranged for messages to reach me through intermediaries.”
“What messages?”
Victoria stared at her coffee.
“Photographs of you.”
Ava's stomach tightened.
“Photographs?”
“Outside your apartment. Walking home from work. Waiting for the bus.”
Ava felt cold.
“One showed you coming out of the laundromat with groceries. Another showed you entering the restaurant where you worked.”
She remembered that restaurant.
She had been fired after a customer complained that her family name attracted unwanted attention.
Victoria looked at her.
“Conrad told me that if I appeared before I could prove who had helped him take over the companies, you would be the one who suffered.”
Ava swallowed.
“So you believed him.”
“I had already lost nearly everything. I couldn't risk losing you.”
“You were afraid he would hurt me.”
“Yes.”
Ava's voice grew quiet.
“He was already hurting me.”
Victoria covered her face.
For the first time, the woman everyone called the Mafia Queen looked completely defeated.
Ava wanted to comfort her.
But she also wanted her mother to understand.
Love couldn't become another excuse for controlling her life.
After a long silence, Victoria said, “I made the wrong decision.”
Ava looked up.
“I thought I could gather enough evidence, return with the truth, and make everything right in one night.”
“You can't.”
“I know.”
Victoria reached across the table, stopping just short of Ava's hand.
“Then tell me what you need.”
Ava considered the question.
“I need to know that the next time something terrible happens, you won't decide what I'm allowed to know.”
Victoria nodded.
“No more secrets.”
Arthur returned from the back booth before either woman could speak again.
He carried a printed copy of the warehouse transfer record Manny had allowed him to photograph.
“I checked something,” he said.
Victoria looked up.
“What?”
“The original authorization wasn't just signed under your name. It was approved through the company's old dual-verification system.”
“Which required two authorized officers,” Victoria said.
Arthur nodded.
“One was supposedly you.”
“And the other?”
Arthur laid the page beside the watch.
Ava read the second approval.
It belonged to Conrad Pierce.
But beneath his name was a handwritten notation that Arthur hadn't noticed before.
Verified in person — Port Liberty.
The date was eleven months earlier.
The same day as the photograph.
Victoria stared at it.
Her face changed.
“That's impossible.”
Ava looked from the document to her mother.
“Why?”
May you like
Victoria's voice shook.
“Because Conrad was standing across the street watching me that day. I saw him.”
