Chapter 18 - The Seventeenth File| The missing file was listed in the original Bellweather inventory as a confidential witness statement. It had been removed before the archive was transferred to the storage facility.
No one knew who had taken it.
The reference number led investigators to a retired attorney who had once represented the trust. He remembered the file because it contained testimony from an employee who had witnessed a private meeting between Dominic Romano and Victor Moretti.
The witness was still alive.
Her name was Grace Whitaker, and she had worked as a receptionist at the old shipping office.
Grace agreed to speak after Rachel explained that the investigation had been reopened and that she would not be asked to make public statements.
She remembered the night Dominic died.
“Mr. Romano came in after closing,” she said. “He was upset. He told me to call Mr. Moretti and ask him to come immediately.”
“Did you hear their conversation?”
“Only part of it. I was outside the office when they began arguing.”
“What did you hear?”
Grace looked at me.
“Dominic said, ‘You promised the money would go back.’ Victor answered, ‘You promised you would keep your mouth shut.’”
My hands went cold.
Grace continued.
“Then I heard something fall. I went inside, and Dominic was standing near the desk. Victor had left.”
“Was Dominic injured?”
“No. He was furious, but he wasn't hurt.”
“What happened afterward?”
“He told me to go home. The next morning, I heard he had died.”
Grace had kept a copy of her statement because the attorney who interviewed her had told her it might be needed later. She had hidden it in a file cabinet at home.
The statement did not establish that Victor caused Dominic's death. But it supported the theory that the two men had argued about the stolen money shortly before the fatal incident.
More importantly, Grace remembered that Dominic had given her a silver locket to hold.
“He said it belonged to someone who deserved the truth,” she told us.
My heart pounded.
“Did he say whose?”
“He called her Eleanor.”
Grace had kept the locket in a small safe for years. After Dominic died, she had tried to return it to the family, but Victor's office refused to accept it. Eventually, she put it away and forgot about it.
She brought it to the meeting.
The silver surface was scratched, and one hinge had been repaired with a tiny screw. Inside was a miniature photograph of my mother and a folded strip of paper.
I recognized the handwriting immediately.
If the original ledger disappears, the truth is in the voices.
Beneath the sentence was a list of dates and initials.
One set of initials appeared beside the date of my mother's accident.
I.R.
Isabella Romano.
I felt a surge of anger so fierce I had to stand.
“Then she did it.”
Rachel caught my arm gently.
“We don't know that. The initials could refer to something else. We need to establish what this note means.”
The investigators agreed.
The dates matched several recorded calls from the old shipping office, including the night Dominic died. The initials might have identified participants, recipients, or people who had received copies of the recordings.
The locket itself contained no hidden tape or storage device.
But the list provided a new route through the archive.
A technician recovered an old backup index from a damaged computer drive. The index referenced several audio files that had been copied to a private server before the records were altered.
Most of the files were corrupted.
One remained intact.
It was dated the evening before my mother's accident.
A woman spoke first.
My mother's voice.
“I have the records. If anything happens to me, the girl must never be blamed.”
A man's voice answered.
“I understand.”
“Do you? Because the person I'm afraid of isn't the one everyone suspects.”
“Then tell me who it is.”
My mother hesitated.
Then she said a name.
The recording ended before the man's response.
The name was not Victor Moretti.
It was not Isabella Romano.
It was not Adrian.
It was Daniel Price.
May you like
The same auditor who had helped us find the ledger had been the last person my mother trusted.
And he had never told us what happened during their final meeting.
