Chapter 3 - What My Mother Did for Vittorio DeLuca
We did not stay at Aurelia House.
I refused Julian’s mansion.
He refused a hospital.
We compromised on a private surgical clinic that definitely existed in a legal gray area I preferred not to understand.
The bullet had passed through muscle along his side.
No organ damage.
Lucky.
The coffee burn on his chest hurt almost as much.
I apologized for neither.
At 7:10 that morning, I sat in a waiting room wearing someone else’s black sweatshirt and my restaurant shoes.
Nolan stood against the wall.
“You throw coffee at people often?”
“Only when management approves.”
He almost smiled.
Then Julian emerged.
Bandaged.
Pale.
Annoyingly upright.
He carried another file.
“My father kept photographs.”
He placed one beside me.
A younger Vittorio DeLuca stood outside a warehouse.
Beside him:
My mother.
Twenty eight.
Dark hair.
Same nose as mine.
Same expression she made when someone wasted her time.
I knew her immediately.
She wore a navy accounting office jacket.
Not scrubs.
On the back someone had written:
EVELYN SULLIVAN
HARBOR COMPENSATION REVIEW
I touched the edge.
“What is Harbor Forty Three?”
Julian sat.
“Twenty years ago, Harbor Nine warehouse burned.”
I knew that fire.
Grayport history.
Seven workers died.
Thirty six injured.
Forty three families qualified for a special restitution program funded by DeLuca Shipping, insurers, and two port contractors.
“Your father owned the warehouse.”
“Yes.”
“Was the fire arson?”
“Not according to the final investigation.”
“What happened?”
“Electrical fault. Sprinkler maintenance failure made it worse.”
“Your father responsible?”
“Partly.”
He did not hide.
“Vittorio created a private reserve beyond the court settlements.”
“How much?”
“Thirty one million dollars.”
My laugh came out wrong.
“Thirty one million.”
“For long term medical care, education, permanent disability, families of the dead.”
“Did they get it?”
Julian looked at the floor.
“No.”
There.
“Where did it go?”
“That is the question.”
“My mother knew?”
“She was brought in as a junior forensic bookkeeper after one family complained their trust payments stopped.”
“My mother was twenty eight.”
“She was good.”
I looked at the photo again.
“She never told me.”
“She probably had reasons.”
“Do not make excuses for a woman you barely knew.”
Julian nodded.
Fair.
Then he continued.
“Evelyn found the reserve had been moved.”
“To where?”
“A legal escrow.”
“That sounds normal.”
“It was.”
“Then?”
“Escrow was transferred into North Harbor Civic Fund during restructuring.”
“Also potentially normal.”
“Yes.”
“Then?”
“Records split.”
Payments disappeared.
Beneficiary lists changed.
Some families were marked paid when they were not.
A few people received money twice.
“What did your father do?”
“Vittorio blamed his younger brother Dominic.”
“Was he right?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re the mafia boss and you don’t know your own family theft?”
Julian’s mouth tightened.
“I was nineteen.”
“How convenient.”
“Yes.”
That surprised me.
Then:
“My father tried to rebuild the ledger with Evelyn.”
“What ledger?”
“The original Harbor Forty Three account history.”
“Key One?”
He nodded.
“One key controlled access to a bank evidence box.”
“And Key Two?”
“Unknown.”
I touched the brass token in my pocket.
“Then why do you think this is a key?”
“Because my father’s letter says Evelyn had the second.”
I put it on the table.
Number 17.
Julian did not touch it.
Good.
He looked at Nolan.
Nolan’s face had changed.
“What?”
Nolan looked away.
Julian noticed.
“Nolan.”
“I know the number.”
“How?”
“My brother.”
Silence.
“What brother?”
Nolan reached into his wallet and removed an old laminated photograph.
A young man in dock coveralls.
Name badge:
MICHAEL REED.
I looked at Julian.
He already understood.
Nolan said:
“My brother died in Harbor Nine.”
One of the seven.
“My family was number seventeen.”
The token sat between us.
I looked at Nolan.
“You think my mother had your family’s key.”
“I think your mother kept something marked with our beneficiary number.”
“Did your family get paid?”
“Court settlement, yes.”
“The reserve?”
“No.”
“How much?”
“According to old letters, my mother was supposed to receive medical support for life.”
“What happened?”
“Stopped after eleven months.”
Nolan had joined Julian fifteen years ago.
Not to infiltrate.
He insisted.
“At first I just needed work.”
“Then?”
“I learned who his father was.”
Julian stared.
“You never told me.”
“No.”
“Fifteen years.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because your father was already dying by then, and you were not the one who stole my brother’s money.”
“Yet.”
Nolan did not flinch.
“I stayed because I thought someday the books would surface.”
Julian looked betrayed.
Not angry yet.
That was worse.
Then I asked:
“Why would my mother carry number seventeen instead of a master key?”
Julian turned the token over.
There was a tiny engraved mark beside the number.
HFR.
Nolan whispered:
“Harbor Family Reserve.”
Then I remembered something.
My mother kept another item with this token.
A small silver key.
She called it the key to an old locker.
After she died, I put everything from her purse into a red recipe tin.
The tin was still in my apartment.
I stood.
Nolan immediately pushed away from the wall.
“No.”
“What?”
“You are not going home alone.”
“I was not asking.”
Julian said:
“He’s right.”
I stared.
“You are both criminals.”
Nolan said:
“And somebody just killed a lawyer and sent seven armed men for you.”
Annoyingly persuasive.
We reached my apartment forty minutes later.
The front door was already open.
Every drawer inside had been pulled out.
My mattress had been cut.
Kitchen cabinets emptied.
May you like
And the red recipe tin was gone.
Continue to the next part: Someone searched Maya’s apartment before she arrived and stole the red tin containing her mother’s second key, but Maya realizes one item from the tin is still with her.
