Chapter 4 - THE FIVE-POINT STAR
Adriana Moretti had written my father's initials inside a blue star.
I saw them the following afternoon, photographed beneath an evidence light while Nora Kane watched from the other side of the table. The envelope had been documented before anyone opened it. Police had agreed to supervise the examination, and I had brought my own lawyer, Maya Flores, a woman recommended by a workers' legal clinic rather than by Luca.
Maya sat beside my mother. Luca sat opposite us, his hands clasped together. Nobody touched the envelope until Officer Morgan confirmed the photographs were complete.
"Would you like to read it?" Nora asked me.
I shook my head. "My mother should. She knew him."
Evelyn put on her reading glasses. Her hands trembled as she lifted the unfolded letter, but her voice stayed surprisingly steady.
"Aaron was right," she read. "The stones were exchanged before delivery, and the replacement certificates are false. Salvatore says the business can settle matters quietly. I no longer believe quiet is possible."
She paused.
Luca stared at the tabletop.
Mom continued. "If this reaches the family who kept the five-point star, use the enclosed inventory to find the person who witnessed the fire door being secured. Do not trust a settlement acknowledgment until you have seen the bank record. I am sorry I waited. Adriana."
The room was silent except for the air conditioner.
"She knew," Mom whispered.
Luca's face was pale. "She tried to tell my father."
"She wrote this after he refused to listen," Nora corrected gently. "That's what the letter supports. We don't yet know everything she did afterward."
Inside the envelope was an inventory of numbered repair tickets. My father's star appeared beside six entries, and the seventh carried a name in block letters: JUNE ALVAREZ — NIGHT SHIFT.
"June worked in the shop's loading office," Mom said. "She was twenty-four when Aaron died. We were friends for a while. Then she moved away."
"Do you know how to reach her?" Nora asked.
"Not anymore."
Maya leaned forward. "We should let the investigators contact her through ordinary channels. No pressure, no surprise visit from security men."
Luca nodded.
I studied the inventory. Most entries listed necklaces and bracelets. One described a set of sixteen loose diamonds. The final column contained odd pairs of numbers: 925/PLAT, 925/18K. I remembered my mother's phrase: silver-shadow trick.
"These aren't prices," I said. "They're the replacement metal and the original metal. Dad was comparing the fake pieces to the real ones."
Mom nodded, excitement and grief mixing in her expression. "And each ticket number corresponds to a customer invoice."
"Do you have those invoices?" Nora asked.
"I have some copies," Mom said. "After the fire, I saved what I could because people came asking for papers. But not all of them."
She took a long breath. "My husband wasn't trying to steal jewelry. He was trying to prove someone else had."
That mattered more than any amount printed beside his name.
We spent the next hour assembling a careful timeline. The original invoices showed customers had entrusted expensive gems to Crown & Alder for repair. Copies of certain gems or settings were returned with false certificates. A separate shipping ledger, now missing, might reveal where the genuine stones had gone. Two people had controlled that process: a Bellini-owned freight firm and the Moretti-backed parent company that insured the workshop.
"What did your father know?" I asked Luca.
He kept his eyes on me. "I don't know yet. I was twenty-one in 2008. I worked under him in a different division. That's not an excuse. It means I have to find out what our company signed."
"Will you let the investigators see the company files?"
"Yes. My lawyers have already been instructed to preserve them."
Maya looked at him. "You'll need more than an instruction. An outside forensic audit and access for the relevant authorities, including records that implicate your own companies."
"Agreed."
Mom let out a long, uneven breath. "I wish somebody had agreed eighteen years ago."
After the meeting, I went home with her. I expected to feel victorious because we'd uncovered a letter. Instead I felt exhausted. I kept seeing my father as he had been in my oldest clear memory: kneeling beside our kitchen table, drawing stars on a brown paper lunch bag.
I had forgotten his voice. That was the part I hated. I remembered the shape of his hands, the scent of metal polish on his shirts, and his habit of singing badly while he washed dishes. But if I closed my eyes, I couldn't remember exactly how he sounded.
Mom found me sitting on the edge of my old bed.
"You don't have to keep doing this," she said.
"I know."
"Do you?"
I looked at her. "I don't want Dad's death turned into another weapon people use against one another. I want to know why it happened."
She sat beside me. "Then remember that answers aren't the same as revenge. Sometimes the truth gives you the right to stop carrying someone else's shame."
We watched the rain move across the window. I asked how she'd survived the first year after Dad's death.
"Badly," she said, and we both laughed through tears. "I worked more shifts. Your aunt picked you up from school. You refused to eat anything green for six months."
"I still don't like boiled spinach."
"Your father knew. He called it pond weed."
For the first time in years, we spoke about him without whispering.
That evening, I received a call from Marco. He was polite, but I could hear traffic and voices behind him.
"Ms. Reed, the Moretti family is prepared to place you on paid leave while the employment issues are reviewed. You'll receive the wages you're owed regardless of whether you come back."
"Thank you. I'd like everything in writing and copied to Maya Flores."
"Of course. There's also something else. The original ring was examined by Barlowe Jewelers today. They confirmed the platinum setting and the serial number."
"So Vanessa's story about a repair was false."
"The shop has no repair record. However, someone ordered the silver replica from a supplier three weeks ago."
"Who?"
"The order was placed through Bellini Heritage Events. The supplier is cooperating."
I held the phone tighter. "Three weeks ago. Before she ever called me upstairs."
"Yes."
He hesitated. "The supplier's invoice contains an instruction about the inside of the band. It says the 925 mark must remain visible."
I sat upright. "Why would they want me to notice it?"
"That's what Nora wants to understand."
After we ended the call, I turned the possibility over in my mind. Vanessa had not merely used a cheap copy because it was convenient. She had chosen a replica I, of all people, would recognize. She knew my mother had worked with jewelry. She knew I'd asked questions before. She had created a trap that depended on my honesty.
The thought made me colder than the threats.
Someone knocked on our apartment door.
Mom was in the kitchen. I looked through the peephole and saw a woman in a raincoat holding a grocery bag.
"Ms. Reed?" she called softly. "I'm not here from the Morettis. My name is June Alvarez. Nora Kane gave me this address after asking if I wanted to speak with you."
I didn't open the door immediately. I called Nora using the number I'd already saved. She confirmed that June had requested a meeting and agreed to speak with me, but hadn't been given our address by Nora; June said she'd remembered Mom's old address and found the building herself. That inconsistency bothered me. Maya advised we meet in a public place the following morning.
I told June through the door. She sighed.
"That's wise," she said. "Tell your mother I'm sorry I disappeared."
"Why did you?" I asked.
The woman was silent for a moment.
"Because after the workshop burned, a man in a gray coat came to my hospital room. He knew which school my little brother attended."
A chill moved through me.
"Who was he?"
"I didn't know his name then. I do now."
She reached into her bag and held a photograph against the peephole. It was blurred, but the man at a loading dock wore a distinctive silver watch.
Gianni Bellini.
"I have something your father asked me to keep," June said. "And I won't hand it to anyone who thinks money can make this story disappear."
She left before I could respond.
I stood with one hand against the locked door, listening to her footsteps fade down the stairs. For eighteen years, my father's story had been a hole in our family photographs. Now people were emerging from that darkness with fragments of it in their hands. I thought about opening the door anyway, about the relief of being able to ask a woman who knew my father what his last days had been like. But Nora's caution was well placed. Vanessa had already used the appearance of an ordinary object to disguise a trap, and I no longer trusted any invitation simply because it promised answers. I wrote down the time June had arrived and saved the message confirming our public meeting. Even curiosity needed boundaries.
But one fact frightened me more than the others.
May you like
Vanessa had built her trap three weeks before dinner. She knew I would recognize the fake ring, knew I would try to tell Luca, and knew exactly what my honesty would cost me.
That meant somebody had been watching my family long before the perfume bottle shattered.
