Chapter 4 - THE CAR THAT CAME HOME
Vincent did not move.
Maggie had expected anger.
Denial.
Something.
Instead, he looked like a man who had been struck somewhere nobody else could see.
“You said Carlo took the car.”
“He did,” Teresa replied.
“Then you just said Dad brought it home.”
“Yes.”
“Which one is true?”
“Both.”
Maggie stepped between them.
“Start again.”
Teresa looked exhausted.
“Carlo left the Moretti house shortly after eight in Dominic’s Lincoln.”
“Why?” Maggie asked.
“I didn’t know then.”
“And Dominic?”
“At the hospital.”
Vincent looked up sharply.
“My mother.”
Teresa nodded.
“Her heart.”
Vincent’s mother, Clara Moretti, had suffered a serious cardiac episode that year.
Vincent remembered the hospital.
He remembered vending-machine crackers.
Plastic chairs.
His father pacing.
“Dad couldn’t have been driving at 8:42.”
“Not at 8:42,” Teresa said.
Maggie stared at her.
“Then how did he bring the car home?”
“Carlo returned it shortly after nine. Dominic drove it from the hospital garage back to the house later.”
Vincent’s face hardened.
“Then why did you tell me the police believed Dad was driving?”
“Because Carlo told them Dominic had borrowed the car earlier.”
Silence.
Maggie understood before Vincent did.
“Your uncle gave your father an alibi.”
Teresa shook her head.
“No.”
Vincent whispered, “My father gave Carlo one.”
Teresa looked at him.
There it was.
Dominic had not killed Patrick.
But he had protected the man who might have.
Answer one.
Two more questions opened.
Why?
And what had Carlo been trying to stop Patrick from doing?
Teresa sat on an overturned crate.
“Dominic believed he could fix everything privately. The company. The families. Carlo. Patrick.”
Maggie’s voice was flat.
“My father didn’t get fixed.”
“No.”
“He got buried.”
“Yes.”
Teresa did not defend herself.
That made Maggie angrier.
Vincent crouched in front of his aunt.
“Did Dad know Carlo hit him?”
“I don’t know what Dominic knew that night.”
“What did he know later?”
Teresa looked at the rosary.
“Enough to never forgive himself.”
Maggie picked it up.
“This belonged to him.”
“Yes.”
“How did my father get it?”
Teresa’s face changed.
“Dominic gave it to Patrick the afternoon before he died.”
“Why?”
“Patrick was frightened.”
“Of Carlo?”
Teresa stood.
“I’ve said too much.”
Maggie laughed bitterly.
“You waited twenty-seven years. I think you can spare another five minutes.”
Teresa looked at her with genuine pain.
“You think silence costs nothing to the person keeping it.”
“I think it costs more to the person buried under it.”
That landed.
Teresa left without another word.
Vincent and Maggie stood alone beside Locker 214.
Finally, Vincent said, “You should hate my family.”
“I’m considering it.”
“You should probably include me.”
Maggie looked at him.
“For what?”
“I benefited from everything they protected.”
“You were eleven.”
“I’m not eleven anymore.”
“No.”
She took the child’s drawing from his hand.
“But he was.”
Vincent looked at his younger self’s crayon marks.
Something in him broke loose.
“I remember the coat.”
Maggie waited.
“Carlo had a camel-colored coat. Brass buttons.”
“Okay.”
“He came into my room later that night.”
Vincent closed his eyes.
“He asked whether I’d been downstairs before Dad went to the hospital.”
“Had you?”
“Yes.”
“What did you see?”
“I don’t know.”
“Vincent.”
“I really don’t.”
His frustration was real.
Maggie softened.
“Memory isn’t a vending machine. You can’t kick it until something falls out.”
“That sounds like professional advice.”
“It’s florist advice.”
They carried the toolbox back to the SUV.
At Sullivan’s Flowers, the closure notice still hung on the front door.
Vincent looked at it.
“I’m getting you an electrician.”
“No.”
“Maggie.”
“I don’t take expensive favors from men whose family is trying to buy my building.”
“I’ll loan you one.”
“I can hire my own.”
“Your own electrician can’t start until Monday.”
She frowned.
“How do you know?”
“Because you called three from the car.”
“You were listening?”
“You were sitting eighteen inches away.”
Maggie unlocked the door.
“You’re infuriating.”
“I’ve heard.”
He stepped inside.
She turned.
“You don’t get to fix everything with money.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Vincent looked around the small shop.
At buckets, ribbon, handwritten order cards, and a ceiling fan that clicked every fourth rotation.
“My father tried that.”
Maggie’s anger eased.
Just a little.
Vincent continued.
“Let me call someone independent. You hire him. You pay him. I stay out of the invoice.”
“That’s suspiciously reasonable.”
“I contain multitudes.”
She stared.
“Was that poetry?”
“I’m under unusual stress.”
The electrician arrived that evening.
The wiring problem was real.
Two junctions behind the front wall had overheated.
Maggie stood with her arms crossed.
“So the complaint wasn’t fake.”
“No,” Vincent said.
“But whoever filed it knew exactly where the weakness was.”
The electrician looked over.
“Only someone with access to the old renovation plans would know.”
Vincent’s expression hardened.
Moretti Holdings had those plans.
Maggie walked upstairs while repairs began.
She pulled out a box of old family photographs.
Vincent joined her.
For nearly an hour, they searched.
Then Maggie found an envelope marked 1999.
Inside were receipts from flower deliveries.
One caught her attention.
MORETTI RESIDENCE.
Seven white lilies.
Delivery time: 7:46 P.M.
Driver: P. Sullivan.
On the back, Patrick had written a license plate number.
Vincent read it.
“That was Carlo’s Cadillac.”
Underneath was one sentence.
C.M. followed me again.
Maggie looked at Vincent.
“So my father knew.”
“He knew Carlo was watching him.”
Vincent turned the card over again.
A corner had been torn away.
Something was written on the remaining edge.
…e the copy inside Clara’s frame.
Maggie frowned.
“Clara?”
“My mother.”
“Where is she?”
Vincent looked toward the dark street outside.
“In the Moretti house.”
Maggie waited.
Vincent did not move.
“My mother died fourteen years ago.”
“Then what frame?”
Vincent went very still.
He looked at the child’s drawing.
Then at the delivery ticket.
May you like
And suddenly he remembered.
“There was one photograph she never let anyone touch.”
