Chapter 3 - WHAT THE NOTEBOOKS REMEMBERED
Elise Rossi chose a public library for our first meeting. She said libraries had witnesses, clocks, and exits that belonged to everyone. I thought that was an unusually sensible way to begin a conversation with a man whose surname had once frightened half the city.
I was not required to attend. Dana had asked me only because I had witnessed Vanessa's conversation with Patricia, and Elise wanted to hear why the old accusations had surfaced again. Luca offered to pay for my transportation. I declined and took the train, wearing my repaired navy coat and new glasses.
At the library entrance, a woman carrying a red canvas bag approached us.
"Megan Foster?" she asked.
"Yes. You must be Elise."
"I am. If you came expecting a grateful daughter, you'll be disappointed."
"I'm here because someone tried to ruin a woman who raised my employer. I don't expect anything from your family."
Elise considered that answer before leading us into a meeting room. Dana joined us with her legal pad. Margaret had brought a tin of ginger biscuits, which no one touched for the first ten minutes.
Elise opened her bag and produced three photocopied pages. They were taken from her father's dispatch notebook: dates, truck identifiers, shift changes, and notes in cramped handwriting.
"My father never destroyed the originals," she said. "He wouldn't let me photograph them until this morning. He says everyone who promised to protect him either died or stopped returning his calls."
One page had been heavily underlined. OCT 18, 2006. SOUTH GATE CHAIN REMOVED. AUTHORIZATION NOT RECEIVED FROM DISPATCH.
Below it was a second entry: BELLINI ASSISTANT PRESENT 7:40 P.M.
"Was Richard there?" I asked.
"His assistant, according to my father. But the official inquiry said the gate was opened by my father and that he gave the route details to rival drivers."
"Does this notebook prove otherwise?" Dana asked.
"By itself? No. He wrote it. Anyone could claim he changed it later. But look at the last page."
She turned it over. Attached was a receipt bearing a time stamp from a commercial security company. The number matched a maintenance ticket for the south gate. Elise had found a reference in a public court filing from an unrelated insurance dispute.
"That ticket wasn't mentioned in the old investigation," Dana said.
"No," Elise replied. "And it lists the customer as Bellini Logistics. My father was employed by Moretti Freight. He had no authority to order repairs under the Bellini account."
Margaret opened the biscuit tin. Her hands shook slightly, though her voice did not.
"Elena tried to tell Dominic that. She said there was a delivery override bearing Richard's initials. Dominic refused to hear it."
Elise looked at her. "Why?"
Margaret stared at the table. "Richard had provided money after the warehouse fire. Dominic owed him. I thought that was the only reason. Now I'm not sure."
The investigation into Briar Street had been closed without criminal charges against Matteo, but Dominic Moretti had made his own verdict public. Matteo lost his job and business connections. The surviving workers were left fighting insurers, while the families of the dead received payments attached to broad confidentiality agreements. None of those facts proved Richard caused the attack. They explained why so few people wanted to reopen it.
"Who died?" I asked.
Elise's expression sharpened. "You should know their names if you're going to tell the story. Samuel Vega, a driver with three children. And Lila Chen, the night dispatcher. She was twenty-four."
I wrote them down. I had heard 'two workers' so often that I hadn't noticed how easy it was to erase the people inside those words.
Elise watched me write. "Good. My father hates when journalists call it a family feud. Two people did not come home."
Margaret wiped her eyes with a tissue. "Your father tried to reach Lila. I remember that much."
"He was the one who got her out of the office," Elise answered. "She died at the hospital. He was there until morning."
Dana asked permission to compare the notebook copies with the South Annex inventory. Elise agreed, provided the originals remained with her father until a preservation procedure could be established. No one argued. The meeting lasted nearly two hours and ended without anyone asking for forgiveness.
On the train home, I looked at my reflection in the glass. My new frames were light, comfortable, ordinary. I realized how much I had adjusted my posture around the broken ones, fearing they might fall. It was a small thing, but I couldn't stop thinking about Matteo carrying twenty years of accusations. He had been forced to adjust his entire life around a lie no one had proved.
At the estate, preparations for the wedding had stopped. Florists retrieved unopened boxes. A caterer collected linens. The absence of Vanessa's voice made the house seem newly furnished.
Luca was in the library with Daniel when I arrived. He stood when I entered, an awkward gesture that startled both of us.
"How was Elise?" he asked.
"Angry," I said. "And prepared."
"She has every right."
I handed him my notes, making certain he knew they weren't Elise's original documents.
"She says you should learn the names of the people who died."
He read them aloud. "Samuel Vega. Lila Chen."
His voice caught on the second name.
"I knew Lila," he said. "She helped me study for my driving test because I was too embarrassed to ask Margaret."
"Then why didn't you question what your father said?"
It was a hard question. I expected him to dismiss it because I was a maid. Instead he sat down.
"Because he was my father. Because I was angry. Because Matteo didn't fight back in front of me, and I decided silence meant guilt. I have no better answer."
"You can make a better decision now."
"I intend to. But it may not be enough."
Daniel interrupted with a report. Richard's attorneys had written to demand the immediate return of gifts given during the engagement. Included was a request for the jewelry box containing Elena's brooch.
"The brooch belonged to my mother," Luca said.
"I know," Daniel replied. "They're claiming the box itself was part of a Bellini appraisal package."
I remembered Vanessa's handbag and the way she had gripped it when Daniel asked to see the contents. "They're still trying to control what gets examined."
Dana's advice was to preserve both box and brooch, record their condition, and respond through counsel rather than hide them. Luca agreed.
That afternoon, I was allowed to organize linens in the private rooms again. Margaret asked if I wanted to return to regular duties so soon. I said I needed the routine, but with two conditions: I would not work alone around Richard or Vanessa, and there would be a written procedure for reporting injuries without asking a fiancée's permission.
"Those aren't unreasonable," she said. "They should already have existed."
Near the end of my shift, Patricia Wells called. She had found another document in her agency's archives: an email from Vanessa to a private investigations firm requesting a 'discreet background profile' on Margaret, including her employment history before Luca's birth and any association with Matteo Rossi.
"The request was dated six months ago," Patricia said. "Long before anyone mentioned a dismissal."
"Why would Vanessa research Margaret that early?"
"That's what I wondered. The firm refused to send me its report."
Patricia forwarded a copy to Dana and asked that her name not be shared casually. I thanked her. After the call, I found Margaret in the linen room, folding towels with extraordinary precision.
"Vanessa investigated you six months ago," I told her.
She paused. "Then she knew I had the letter before I thought she did."
"Maybe."
Margaret sat down on the little bench against the wall. "I always thought she wanted to replace me because I knew Elena's habits. She asked what Elena kept in her desk, which charities she supported, which friends Dominic disliked. I answered because it seemed harmless."
"It wasn't your responsibility to recognize a scheme before it happened."
"Perhaps not. But I wish I'd trusted my unease."
When she stood again, she touched my shoulder gently.
"The first week you worked here, you apologized because a guest spilled wine on your apron," she said. "I remember telling you not to apologize for someone else's mistake."
"I remember."
"I should have taken my own advice twenty years ago."
That evening, Lakefront Records sent Dana a digital inventory update. The sealed case from South Annex shelf nineteen had been listed in 2018 for transfer to an offsite climate-controlled room. The transfer was approved under a company name Dana did not recognize: Riverton Asset Services.
Luca did.
"Richard owns half of Riverton," he told me. "He told my father it existed to manage old records for the family."
A second attachment named the employee who authorized the transfer. I leaned over the desk to read it.
Margaret Carter.
I stared at the screen. "But she says she never touched the archive."
May you like
"And I believe she didn't," Luca answered.
For the first time, we were looking at more than a false accusation planned for dinner. Someone had been using Margaret's identity for years. The stolen brooch was merely the newest part of a much older design.
