Chapter 6 – The Patient Who Wasn’t Michael

“Frank Bellini was in the hospital?”

Luca stared at the parking ticket.

Detective Rivera nodded.

“That’s what the notation suggests.”

“But Vanessa told me her father was at home that night.”

“Then we’ll need to establish which account is accurate.”

Luca looked toward the Mercedes.

“Could Michael have driven him there?”

“It’s possible. But we don’t know who drove the car.”

He rubbed his forehead.

For the first time since we’d found the storage unit, I saw something like hope in his face.

If Michael had taken Frank to the hospital, perhaps he’d been alive much later than anyone believed.

Perhaps he’d walked away.

Perhaps—

I caught myself.

After nine years, even I wanted to believe there might be a simple answer.

Rivera seemed to recognize the danger of that hope.

“Mr. Moretti, I need you to be careful about drawing conclusions. A parking ticket tells us where a vehicle may have been. Not who was inside.”

Luca nodded.

But he kept looking at the ticket.

Back at the mansion, Vanessa was sitting in the morning room.

Her engagement ring lay on the table beside her.

It was the first time I’d seen her without it.

She looked up as Luca entered.

“Did you find the car?”

He stopped.

“How did you know we were looking for it?”

Her expression tightened.

“Because you asked me about the storage unit.”

“You told me you didn’t know where the records were.”

“I said I couldn’t remember.”

“Vanessa.”

She looked away.

“Yes. I knew about the unit.”

Luca sat opposite her.

“Was your father admitted to St. Agnes Hospital on October sixteenth?”

She froze.

“Why?”

“We found a parking ticket.”

Her fingers moved toward the silver bracelet.

“Was Michael with him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then tell me what you do know.”

Vanessa stared at the carpet.

“My father came home with a bandage around his hand.”

“What happened?”

“He said he’d been in a fight.”

“With Michael?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

Luca leaned forward.

“You keep saying that.”

“Because I don’t!”

For a moment, the old Vanessa returned.

The woman who could silence staff with a look.

Then she seemed to hear herself.

She lowered her voice.

“I’m sorry.”

Luca waited.

“My father had a temper. He’d been drinking that night. When I asked about Michael, he told me to stay out of it.”

“Did you?”

Vanessa’s eyes filled.

“At first.”

“And afterward?”

She looked directly at Luca.

“Afterward, I was afraid of what I might find.”

I wondered whether she expected him to feel sorry for her.

He didn’t.

But he didn’t shout either.

“What happened to Michael?”

Vanessa’s face crumpled.

“I don’t know where he ended up.”

It was a strange answer.

Not I don’t know what happened.

Not I never saw him again.

I don’t know where he ended up.

Luca noticed.

“Where did he start?”

She looked frightened.

“Luca, please.”

He stood.

“I’m not asking you to protect me from the truth.”

She wiped her cheeks.

“You think that’s what I’m doing?”

“I think you’ve spent years deciding what I was allowed to know.”

He picked up the engagement ring from the table.

For a moment, he looked at it.

Then he placed it back.

“I’m finished letting you decide.”

The next morning, Rivera returned with information from the hospital’s archived records.

Frank Bellini had been admitted shortly after midnight on October sixteenth.

He’d received treatment for a deep cut across his right hand and several bruised ribs.

His chart listed the cause as a workplace accident.

There was no record of Michael Moretti receiving treatment that night.

Luca listened silently.

“Could he have been there under another name?” he asked.

“We’ve asked the hospital to check. So far, there’s no indication of that.”

“Then the car was there for Frank.”

“That appears likely.”

Rivera opened her notebook.

“There’s something else. Frank’s original intake report states that he was accompanied by his adult daughter.”

“Vanessa.”

“Yes.”

Luca’s face hardened.

“She told me she didn’t know whether he went to the hospital.”

Rivera nodded.

“We’ve requested any remaining records that might identify who drove the vehicle.”

Then she turned toward me.

“Emily, you said Ms. Bellini was trying to take Mr. Bennett’s recorder when you were injured.”

“Yes.”

“Did she say anything about her father?”

I thought carefully.

For several seconds, I heard only the old man’s frightened voice in my memory.

Then Vanessa’s.

There had been a moment when Samuel insisted he wouldn’t surrender Isabella’s message.

Vanessa had stepped closer.

And she’d said something I’d been too frightened to understand at the time.

“She said, ‘You don’t know what he made me do.’”

Rivera looked up.

“Who was she talking about?”

“I assumed Luca.”

Luca shook his head.

“Vanessa wouldn’t refer to me that way in a conversation about Michael.”

Rivera made a note.

“Possibly her father.”

I looked toward the window.

A cold November rain had begun falling over the gardens.

The same kind of weather the police report described on the night Michael vanished.

Rivera closed her notebook.

“I want to speak with Thomas Calder again. There may be a detail about Frank’s injuries he remembers.”

Luca nodded.

Then I heard myself speak.

“Detective?”

She turned.

“There’s something else.”

I told her about the narrow silver bracelet Vanessa wore.

The leaf-shaped charm Isabella had mentioned in the recording.

“Vanessa was rubbing it when Luca asked about the hospital,” I said. “She does that when she’s nervous.”

Luca looked toward the morning room.

“She told me her father gave it to her.”

Rivera made another note.

“Then perhaps we should ask her about it.”

That afternoon, Rivera interviewed Vanessa formally.

I wasn’t present.

But when Luca returned to the kitchen afterward, he looked shaken.

“Emily.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Vanessa told the detective something she never told me.”

I waited.

He placed a photocopied page on the table.

It was the hospital’s visitor record.

Beneath Frank Bellini’s name was Vanessa’s signature.

And beside it, in her own handwriting, was a note.

Father injured during vehicle recovery. One additional person involved. Refused ambulance.

Luca looked at me.

“The hospital asked who else was hurt.”

My chest tightened.

“What did she tell them?”

He swallowed.

“She told them Michael Moretti was alive when she last saw him.”

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