Chapter 6 - THE WATCH THAT LIED
I didn't answer Isabella immediately. Through the kitchen window of our temporary apartment, I could see a courier bicycle leaning against a fence and an elderly man walking a small terrier. Ordinary life was continuing on the other side of the glass. Inside, a single name had made the floor seem unsteady.
"Mason?" I repeated.
"Lorenzo gave him a silver watch when Mason got married," Isabella said. "There's an engraving on the back, a little sailing boat and their initials. The man at the road had one. I saw it when he grabbed my arm."
"Are you sure it was Mason?"
"No. That's the terrible part. I remember the watch, not the face. My head hurt. The headlights were in my eyes. I need Tessa to know that distinction."
I called the detective as soon as Isabella ended the conversation. I repeated exactly what she'd said, including the uncertainty. Tessa thanked me and told me not to contact Mason about it. Within an hour, the company security arrangements at our apartment had been replaced by officers from a unit not connected to the DeLuca organization.
Mason himself was interviewed that afternoon. He gave up his work telephone and access credentials voluntarily. Lorenzo instructed his employees not to interfere and told Mason to take leave while investigators reviewed the evidence. Neither man seemed pleased by it, but both understood why it mattered.
When I finally spoke to Lorenzo, he sounded exhausted. "Mason carried my father's coffin," he said. "He's been here for fifteen years."
"Vincent was here longer."
"I know. That's what frightens me. I can't keep treating years of loyalty like a receipt for innocence."
Detective Grant found a police report that complicated the accusation. Six months earlier, Mason had reported that the watch was stolen during a burglary at his old apartment. A photograph attached to the report showed a distinctive scratch beside the engraving. At the time, the watch had not been recovered. A replacement had been made for him, but it lacked the scratch.
"Someone had his old watch," Tessa told me. "That doesn't tell us who, and it doesn't exclude him from other conduct. But it means the sighting is not an identification of Mason."
She also established that on the night of the crash, Mason had been attending a family wedding in Milwaukee. Travel records, photographs and independent witnesses placed him there through the following morning. It would have been difficult, though not impossible, for him to reach the accident scene in time. The detectives would verify the timing rather than relying on the alibi alone.
I told myself to be relieved. Instead, I kept thinking about how easily a stolen object could make a decent person look guilty. The entire case seemed built around swapped names and borrowed identities: Isabella registered as Natalie, a dead woman buried as another, Lorenzo's signature appearing where he had never written it, and now a familiar watch in an unfamiliar hand.
That afternoon I met a lawyer named Julia Finch. Tessa had supplied a list of local legal aid and private attorneys, and I chose Julia because she explained things without making me feel foolish for asking. We sat in her modest office beside a window full of potted plants. She described my options as a witness and as an employee who had been threatened.
"You do not owe the DeLuca company a public statement," she said. "You can cooperate with investigators without allowing anyone to use your face in a press release. And you have a right to protect your child from intrusive questions."
"What if Lorenzo wants to help?"
"You can accept help and still set boundaries. Gratitude isn't a contract."
I liked that sentence enough to write it down.
When I returned to the apartment, Emma was constructing a hospital for stuffed animals. Her rabbit lay beneath a dish towel, with a plastic spoon resting beside its head. She announced that Bruno would be the doctor once he came home.
"What are we going to do when this is over?" she asked.
"Go to the park. Visit Aunt Mia. Maybe find a place with a little garden."
"Can we have a dog?"
"Let's talk about that when you're older."
She considered the possibility of being older with great seriousness. Then she offered the rabbit a pretend injection made from a crayon.
By evening, Tessa had another piece of evidence. At the clinic, technicians recovered a discarded visitor log from a printer's memory. The entries had been deleted from the administrator's system but not from the printer cache. They recorded six visits by Philip Rance, Vincent's executive assistant, to the recovery ward while Isabella was registered there. His badge was issued under the name Peter Wells.
"Can you link him to the watch?" Lorenzo asked when Tessa briefed him.
"We're investigating."
"Philip has worked for Vincent eight years. He knows every delivery route at the pier."
"Then he is someone we need to interview. Let us handle it."
Philip didn't answer his apartment door when police arrived. His car was found in a paid garage, and his company laptop had been wiped. Officers recovered a paper receipt from his trash showing a cash payment at a watch repair shop. The shop owner remembered a silver watch with a sailboat scratched on the back. Philip had brought it in and demanded the repair be completed overnight.
The detail made my throat tighten. The watch had been planted in the story long before we understood the purpose. It was a means of pointing suspicion at Mason, perhaps also at Lorenzo himself.
"Why would Vincent need that?" I asked Julia over the phone.
"To create reasonable doubt about his own role, perhaps. But remember: motive is a theory until supported by evidence. Let the investigators establish it."
I did remember. I was learning that telling the truth sometimes meant resisting the comfort of a neat explanation.
Two days later, Isabella was permitted a short visit with Emma. Dr. Price approved it after reviewing her recovery, and Tessa arranged a quiet afternoon at the medical facility. I carried Emma's drawing and a bag of plain biscuits. She dressed herself in the yellow cardigan Isabella had seen near the freight sheds, insisting it was her lucky one.
The reunion was gentle and almost unbearably sweet. Emma ran toward the bed, then stopped to ask if she could hug Isabella without hurting her. Isabella opened both arms. The little girl climbed carefully onto the mattress and put her cheek against Isabella's shoulder.
"I gave Mr. DeLuca your letter," she said.
"I know. You were wonderful."
"Did the rabbit do good too?"
"The very best."
I stood beside the window and watched Isabella close her eyes as she held Emma. She had been deprived of ordinary affection for so long that even a child's impatient hug seemed almost miraculous.
Then an old black dog shuffled into the room behind Ruth Alden. Bruno moved stiffly, his nails clicking against the floor. Emma squealed. He sniffed her hand, wagged his tail, and rested his head against Isabella's knee.
Lorenzo came through the door a moment later and dropped to his knees beside him. "Bruno," he whispered. The dog's entire back half wagged. Lorenzo buried his face briefly in the coarse fur and laughed through tears.
For a few minutes, nobody mentioned Vincent, the clinic, or the money. We were simply people and a tired old dog in a room where the windows had finally been opened.
After Emma went down the hall with Ruth to get water, Isabella spoke quietly to Lorenzo. "I don't want to return to the estate yet."
He nodded at once. "Whatever you need."
"I love you," she said. "I also remember how it felt when you dismissed my questions about the relief fund. I need to know I can raise a concern without being told someone else understands your company better."
Lorenzo looked at his hands. "You can. And when you're ready, I want to hear every concern, including the ones about me."
"That may take a while."
"I waited two months believing you were dead. I can learn patience while you're alive."
She smiled faintly.
A knock came at the door. Tessa entered with news. Investigators had located Philip Rance at a motel outside the city. He had asked for an attorney and offered to provide information about Vincent's instructions. The detective was careful not to promise a confession or a deal.
"He says he handled the vehicle after the crash," she told Isabella. "But he claims somebody higher than Vincent approved everything."
Lorenzo looked up sharply. "Who?"
"He hasn't given us a name. He says he wants protection first."
Isabella went still. "The relief fund board has five trustees," she said. "Vincent controlled the money, but one trustee signed the amendments that let the payments happen."
"Who signed them?" Tessa asked.
"Everett Shaw. He chaired the trustees after the crane accident. Lorenzo, you remember him. He hosted our anniversary dinner."
Lorenzo nodded slowly. "He also chaired the committee reviewing Vincent's work."
The room fell quiet. Bruno settled under Isabella's chair with a sigh, unaware that another familiar name had entered the story.
Then Tessa showed us a scanned board resolution recovered from the container. It bore Everett Shaw's signature and authorized an extraordinary transfer from the victims' fund. The date was the morning after Isabella's crash.
May you like
In the margin someone had written a note by hand: Proceed upon confirmation of Mrs. DeLuca's death.
I thought of the sealed coffin and the rushed funeral, of Emma carrying a message inside a rabbit, of Ruth in her yellow gloves and Natalie Price's mother waiting for news. Isabella's supposed death had not been merely a cruelty. To someone on that board, it had been a financial condition.
