Chapter 3 - The Guests Who Never Ate
Uncle Salvatore Rossi owned North Pier Logistics, three waterfront warehouses, and a reputation for sending expensive flowers to funerals he had helped make inevitable.
That was how Dominic described him, standing in Rosa's kitchen with his hands folded around a mug she had refused to fill with anything stronger than coffee. Chloe had agreed to meet him only because Nadine Price was sitting at the same table. Rosa had made the fourth chair available to Paulie, then placed a plate of toast in front of him as if food might discourage trouble.
"You let your uncle handle Laura's deliveries," Chloe said.
"I let him arrange transportation for large events. There was a contract."
Nadine lifted a brow. "Do you have it?"
"My office does."
"Then my client needs a copy of anything she signed or was asked to authorize."
Dominic looked toward Chloe. "I'm starting an independent review."
"You need one," she said. "But somebody used my father after his death and sent a man to Sam's school. I'm not waiting for your relatives to investigate your relatives."
The coffee went untouched. Dominic said, "What do you need?"
Chloe laid out the paper invoices she had been permitted to copy before Nicky lost his access. On five dates, Laura supposedly supplied meals to the closed Harbor Family Center. Each delivery included a fuel surcharge and a cleaning charge. Yet the restaurant had bought no extra ingredients. Rosa had saved her own kitchen-order book, a stained spiral notebook whose totals were written in pencil and whose cover carried a cartoon tomato.
"These are what I actually cooked," Rosa said, tapping the pages. "You don't make two hundred dinners with six pounds of carrots and an empty freezer."
"Someone can invoice for nonexistent meals," Nadine replied. "The harder question is where the money went."
"North Pier sent the transport bills," Chloe said. "But the destination is a company mailbox attached to Frank Hayes. My father."
Dominic rubbed his temple. "The cost center belonged to a community program Laura supported years ago."
"Who authorized it?"
He stared at the tabletop. "I did. Originally. It provided meals after a waterfront apartment fire."
"When did you last check whether anyone was still receiving them?"
Dominic had no answer.
Rosa broke a slice of toast in half. "My sister worked at that center before they closed it. The families who came there weren't photographs on a website. They had names. Some of them still come to the back door when we're throwing bread away."
Chloe watched Dominic take that in. Whatever passed across his face, she wasn't ready to call it remorse.
Nadine asked them to keep original files intact and make a written list of each discrepancy without changing anything in the accounting system. Then she called a colleague who represented restaurant employees in wage cases. The discussion made Chloe's stomach turn: her pay stubs might show deductions she had never authorized, and several workers could be affected.
"This isn't just about me," she said.
"It never was," Rosa replied.
After the meeting, Chloe took Rosa's car to a modest building on the west side. Nadine had arranged for them to meet Miriam Bell, the Harbor Family Center's former director. The center's windows were boarded. A faded mural on one wall showed children carrying bowls beneath a yellow sun.
Miriam, a woman with close-cropped gray hair and paint on her sleeves, greeted them at a neighboring church. She had been helping volunteers assemble food bags in its basement.
"We closed in January," she confirmed. "The building's owner sold it. We told every donor."
Chloe showed her one of the invoices. Miriam adjusted her glasses and studied it.
"That's our old address. That's my name at the bottom. But I never signed this."
"Do you have a copy of the closing notice?" Chloe asked.
"Three copies. I don't trust computers to remember what people want forgotten."
A volunteer brought out a folder that also held records of twenty-seven families still waiting for promised grocery assistance. Miriam had paid for some food herself until her savings ran out.
"I didn't know Laura was still taking money in our name," she said. "I thought somebody had made a mistake and stopped."
Chloe's anger began to change shape. The missing numbers had faces now. She asked Miriam whether she could give Nadine a statement. Miriam said yes before the question was finished.
On the church steps, Chloe spotted a black sedan idling at the curb. She recognized the driver's thick neck and leather jacket from the alley where Varga's collector had cornered her. Her skin went cold.
"Back inside," she told Rosa.
The driver opened his door. He did not have a knife this time. He held up a phone with Chloe's photograph on it.
"Mr. Varga wants a conversation," he said.
"He can call my lawyer."
"Your father wasn't the saint you're making him out to be."
"I never said he was."
The man seemed briefly wrong-footed. "He kept something that didn't belong to him. You find it, this goes away."
Chloe backed toward the church door. "What something?"
"Ask why he changed his will two days before he died."
Then he got into the sedan and drove away.
Rosa caught Chloe's wrist, not to restrain her but to keep her from following. "We're going inside. Then you're calling Nadine."
The will was an unfamiliar complication. Chloe had filed for administration of a tiny estate because her father had left no will that she knew of. He'd left an empty wallet, utility arrears, and a brother who still asked whether dead people could be mad at you.
At home that evening, Chloe opened the cardboard box of her father's effects. Sam was staying overnight with Rosa's sister, a retired teacher whom he liked, under an arrangement Chloe had made herself. For once, she could search without him watching her hands.
At the bottom of the box, beneath a photograph of their mother, she found a receipt from a downtown legal office. It was dated two days before Frank's death. The receipt was for a consultation, not a will. In the notes, someone had written: CLIENT REQUESTED INFORMATION ABOUT REPORTING FRAUD; NO DOCUMENT EXECUTED.
Chloe photographed it and called Nadine. "The collector lied about the will. But he knew my father visited an attorney."
"We'll contact the office with proper authorization," Nadine said. "Don't go looking for what a threatening stranger wants you to find."
Chloe agreed. Then she unfolded the photograph of their mother. On the back, in Frank's untidy handwriting, were five words she hadn't noticed before:
May you like
I'M SORRY I TOOK THE JOB.
She had spent her whole life wondering which job he meant.
