Chapter 15 - THE DRIVER
His name was Walter Vale.
He had died nine years earlier.
Lung cancer.
No criminal record.
No known organized-crime connections.
That should have ended the theory.
It didn’t.
Agent Hall found a payment to his mortgage company three days after Isabella’s funeral.
Seventy-five thousand dollars.
Exactly.
Roman stared at the record on our kitchen table.
Nicholas was asleep upstairs.
Clara was coloring two rooms away.
Life continued with insulting normality.
“Maybe Devereux paid his mortgage because he represented our insurance company.”
Hall looked at Roman.
“You don’t believe that.”
“No.”
“What do you believe?”
Roman rubbed both hands over his face.
“I don’t know anymore.”
That was new.
Old Roman always knew.
Even when he was wrong.
Especially when he was wrong.
Leah sat across from him.
“My brother believed your father killed ours.”
Roman looked at her.
“And I believed my father corrupted everything he touched.”
“Maybe both of you were given stories.”
Agent Hall nodded.
“Stories create useful enemies.”
I looked at the ledger.
“Who benefited?”
Everyone turned toward me.
“If Isabella was investigating Carlo and Devereux, who benefited from her death?”
“Carlo,” Roman said.
“Obviously.”
“Too obviously.”
Hall studied me.
I continued.
“If Carlo wanted her dead, why preserve a ledger identifying her as dangerous?”
Roman understood.
“He wouldn’t.”
“And why put himself all over it?”
Leah frowned.
“Unless it wasn’t his ledger.”
Exactly.
The Book of Debts belonged to someone else.
Not Carlo.
Not Roman’s father.
Martin Devereux.
Then Sophia spoke from the doorway.
“You’re still missing something.”
Roman closed his eyes.
“Sophia, I love you deeply, but if you produce another twenty-year secret from your handbag, I may actually lose my mind.”
She almost smiled.
“No handbag.”
She held up a cassette.
“I took this before Agent Hall catalogued the box.”
Hall stood.
“You removed evidence?”
“Yes.”
“Sophia.”
“It belonged to Isabella.”
“That isn’t how evidence works.”
Sophia ignored her and placed the cassette in front of Roman.
His mother’s handwriting covered the label.
FOR ROMAN.
Roman did not touch it.
For the first time since I had known him, my husband looked like a nineteen-year-old boy.
“What if I don’t want to hear it?”
Nobody answered.
I moved beside him.
“You don’t have to.”
He looked at me.
That mattered.
Choice.
Even now.
Even this.
He waited almost a minute.
May you like
Then reached for the tape.
“Play it.”
