Chapter 7 - OUR MOTHERS HAD BEEN WORKING TOGETHER
Leo’s mother was alive.
Maeve met her the next morning.
Lucia Rossi lived in a quiet house north of the city, far from the restaurants and clubs associated with the Rossi name.
She was seventy.
Elegant.
Sharp-eyed.
She looked at Maeve and immediately said:
“You have Elizabeth’s mouth.”
Maeve nearly cried.
“You knew my mother?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“She came to me because our husbands were lying to us.”
Lucia had discovered Vincent and Leo’s father, Antonio Rossi, investing in Bellweather.
Antonio later tried to pull out.
Vincent refused.
Elizabeth discovered Richard was using Sullivan Floral invoices to hide money connected to Bellweather.
The two women began sharing records.
Lucia kept one set.
Elizabeth another.
The green ledger was not one physical book.
It was a code name for matching records.
One ledger from Sullivan.
One from Rossi.
Together, they proved the fraud.
“What happened to yours?” Leo asked.
Lucia looked at her son.
“Your father took it.”
“And?”
“He hid it before he died.”
Leo’s jaw tightened.
Antonio’s stroke happened six months later.
Dr. Peter Lawson treated him.
Same doctor who helped declare Elizabeth incompetent.
Maeve looked at Lucia.
“You think he killed your husband?”
Lucia’s expression hardened.
“I think he kept him sedated when he might have survived.”
That was not the same as murder.
It was enough to reopen suspicion.
Then Lucia looked at Maeve.
“Elizabeth called me once after Richard told everyone she died.”
Maeve’s heart stopped.
“When?”
“Two years later.”
“She was coherent?”
“Completely.”
“What did she say?”
“That she had hidden her half of the green ledger where Richard would never look.”
“Where?”
Lucia smiled sadly.
“She said, ‘Under the flowers he never notices.’”
Maeve thought of a thousand flowers.
Warehouse.
Shop.
Greenhouses.
Her mother’s garden.
Then it hit her.
The warehouse cooler.
An old mosaic panel of painted peonies hung behind the accounting office.
Elizabeth commissioned it before Maeve was born.
Richard hated it.
Called it outdated.
Never looked at it.
Maeve drove directly to Sullivan Floral.
Leo followed.
They removed the mosaic.
Behind it:
A shallow steel cavity.
Inside, wrapped in plastic—
A green notebook.
Maeve’s hands shook.
Invoice numbers.
Dates.
Names.
Richard.
Vincent.
Martin Shaw.
Dr. Lawson.
Payments from Bellweather.
Payments to St. Augustine.
Payments to private physicians.
Then one name appeared repeatedly:
C.S.
Caroline Sullivan.
Maeve stared.
Caroline had been receiving money years before she became trustee.
She would have been seventeen.
Too young to understand business.
“What is C.S.?”
Sofia checked.
Not Caroline.
Charlotte Sullivan.
Maeve frowned.
“I don’t know anyone named Charlotte.”
Lucia, reached by phone, went silent.
Then:
“Richard never told you?”
“Told us what?”
Maeve and Caroline had another sister.
An older sister.
Charlotte.
Born three years before Caroline.
Declared dead as an infant.
Except Lucia said that was false.
May you like
Charlotte survived.
And according to Elizabeth’s ledger, Richard had been paying for her care for thirty-two years.
