Chapter 5 - THE MAN IN THE WRONG GRAVE|
"Someone is planning to murder my father?"
Luca's voice echoed through the empty community kitchen.
Nora Alvarez nodded.
"Daniel said the people who tried to silence him twenty years ago were afraid Frank would finally tell the truth."
Margaret gripped the back of a wooden chair.
"Then where is my husband?"
Nora looked ashamed.
"I don't know."
"Please."
Margaret stepped closer.
"I've spent twenty years believing he was dead."
Nora began crying.
"He came here yesterday looking frightened and exhausted."
She pointed toward the storage room.
"He opened locker twenty-four, took an old envelope, and told me he needed to protect someone."
"Who?" Luca demanded.
"His wife."
Margaret closed her eyes.
I watched hope and heartbreak struggle across her face.
For twenty years, she had accepted the cruelty of death.
Now she was being asked to accept something even harder.
The possibility that her husband had lived without her.
Nora opened a dusty filing cabinet.
"There's something you should see."
She removed an old photograph from a cardboard folder.
It showed a group of volunteers standing outside St. Agnes during Christmas 2005.
Daniel Sullivan stood near the center, smiling beneath a crooked Santa hat.
Beside him was a younger man with sandy hair and a serious expression.
"Who's that?" I asked.
Nora touched his face.
"Andrew Cole."
Frank's expression suddenly changed.
"I remember him."
"Andrew worked nights at one of Victor Bellini's warehouses," Nora explained.
"He volunteered here whenever he could."
Luca examined the photograph.
"What happened to him?"
Nora lowered her voice.
"He disappeared around the same time Daniel supposedly died."
The room went silent.
"Did anyone report him missing?" I asked.
"His family did."
Nora wiped her eyes.
"But the investigation went nowhere."
Frank sank into a chair.
"Oh, God."
Margaret stared at him.
"What aren't you telling us?"
Frank looked at Daniel's photograph.
"Twenty years ago, I went to the morgue after the police identified his body."
He swallowed.
"The man's face was badly injured, but something about his hands bothered me."
"The scar," Luca said.
Frank nodded.
"And there was another difference."
He looked at Margaret.
"Daniel wore a gold crown on one of his back teeth."
Margaret covered her mouth.
"He got it after falling from a ladder."
Frank nodded.
"The body had no gold crown."
"Then why didn't you speak?" she demanded.
Frank's eyes filled with tears.
"Because Victor told me you would be next."
Luca stared at his father.
"You believed him?"
Frank looked toward the snowy window.
"Three days earlier, someone had tried to kill me."
He paused.
"Daniel came to warn me, but someone intercepted him."
"Victor?" Luca asked.
"I believed so."
"Why didn't you tell the police?"
"The detective investigating Daniel's death was receiving money from one of Victor's companies."
Frank's voice broke.
"I didn't know whom I could trust."
Margaret shook her head.
"So you let the wrong man be buried under my husband's name."
Frank nodded.
"And I've hated myself every day since."
I looked at the photograph of Andrew Cole.
"That man had a family, too."
Nora nodded.
"A little girl."
Her eyes filled with tears.
"She was eight years old when he disappeared."
Margaret began trembling.
"Then somebody's daughter has spent twenty Christmases wondering why her father abandoned her."
Nobody answered.
I suddenly understood that this story wasn't only about one missing husband.
It was about two families whose lives had been destroyed by the same secret.
Luca took out his phone and called the attorney who handled his legitimate business affairs.
He asked for help preserving old records and connecting the family with independent investigators.
Then he turned to Frank.
"Father, I need every document you kept from that year."
Frank nodded.
"There's a box in my bedroom."
We returned to the mansion shortly after noon.
Vanessa was waiting beside the grand staircase.
Her father was nowhere in sight.
"Where have you been?" she asked.
Luca walked past her.
"Looking for the truth."
Vanessa followed us into Frank's private sitting room.
Frank opened an old wooden chest and removed a stack of letters, funeral photographs, and newspaper clippings.
Most were dated twenty years earlier.
Margaret sat quietly while Luca examined them.
Then I noticed a photograph partially hidden beneath an obituary.
It showed several people standing outside the funeral home where Daniel had supposedly been buried.
Victor Bellini stood near the hearse.
Beside him was a teenage girl with blonde hair.
She wore a black coat and carried a leather briefcase.
I brought the photograph closer to the window.
My stomach tightened.
The girl was Vanessa.
I looked toward her.
"Mrs. Moretti, weren't you at Daniel Sullivan's funeral?"
Vanessa went completely still.
Luca turned.
"What?"
I handed him the photograph.
He studied it carefully.
Then he looked at his wife.
"Yesterday, you said you'd never heard Daniel Sullivan's name before."
Vanessa swallowed.
"That was twenty years ago."
Luca held up the picture.
"Then why were you standing beside his coffin?"
She opened her mouth.
No words came out.
May you like
And Frank whispered something that made the blood drain from my face.
"Because her father made her deliver the papers that convinced the police they had found Daniel's body."
