Chapter 3 - The Left DoorBy morning, Rosa and Lily were staying in a quiet apartment above Naomi Park’s law office. Two security officers whose records Naomi had checked guarded the building. Lily believed they were there because Nico owned a great many important papers.
Rosa wished she could believe that too.
Nico spent the night learning exactly who had entered the sitting room corridor after the party. Twelve staff members. Three security officers. Vivienne. Her assistant. And a caterer who had given a false address.
“Any one of them could have taken that photograph,” Naomi told him.
“Find the caterer.”
“I am. You need to let the police see the threat.”
Nico disliked bringing police into anything bearing the Bellandi name. That reluctance had helped make him powerful. It had also left Clara’s death buried beneath private investigations that answered to him.
He forwarded the message to a detective Naomi trusted.
Then he went to see Rosa.
Lily was at the kitchen table, drawing the ballroom chandelier as a sun with too many arms. Rosa had already told her that the contest was over and she had done nothing wrong. Lily seemed relieved by the first part.
Nico set a paper bag on the table.
“Your sneaker came off last night,” he said. “I brought it back.”
Lily looked at the shoe, then at him. “Do you live in the big house all by yourself?”
“Usually.”
“That sounds boring.”
“It has been.”
She considered his answer, accepted it, and went back to coloring. Rosa stepped into the hall with him.
“You can’t keep visiting without deciding what she should know,” she said. “Lily asks about her father sometimes. If we tell her, we do it gently.”
“I know.”
“And you don’t get to take her from me.”
Nico’s face changed. “I would never ask you to give her up.”
“You have lawyers who could make a very convincing argument.”
“I have lawyers because I don’t want anyone making that argument.” He paused. “You’re her mother, Rosa. I can see that.”
Rosa had prepared herself to fight him. His answer left her with nothing to say.
Naomi called while they stood in the hall. She had found a photographer who worked the Harborlight fundraiser on the night of the fire. Most of his photographs had been sold to a newspaper. He had kept the original memory card.
An hour later, the three adults sat at Naomi’s conference table while photographs appeared on a monitor.
Guests arriving. Dancers backstage. Clara smiling beside a grand piano. Nico in the audience, watching her.
Then the time stamps reached 9:14 p.m.
Vivienne Cross appeared at the theater’s left service door, wearing a white coat. Next to her stood Nico’s uncle, Salvatore Bellandi.
Nico leaned forward. “Vivienne told me she was in New York that night.”
The next image showed Sal taking an envelope from a man Nico recognized as his former head of security. A third showed Vivienne looking toward the photographer. Her face had changed; she knew she had been seen.
At 9:26, smoke appeared behind the theater windows.
Naomi saved copies in three places and called the detective. Rosa asked to see the photograph of Clara again.
“Look at her hand,” she said.
Clara stood beside the piano with one hand resting on its lid. On the floor near her foot sat a long blue case.
“The music box,” Rosa whispered.
Nico turned. “What?”
“Clara’s music box was blue. The men who came to my apartment asked for it. I thought they meant the little wooden one Lily plays. What if they were looking for that case?”
The photographer enlarged the image. A silver clasp on the case caught the stage light.
Nico felt another piece of the buried memory rise. Through the theater smoke, Clara had called something to him. For four years, he had heard only the sound of his own name.
Now he remembered a word.
“Piano.”
He saw her again, turning beneath the stage lights. Her hand went to her heart, then to the floor. After the turn, she pointed left.
There had been a service door left of the piano.
“She was showing me where to go,” Nico said.
Naomi pulled up the theater’s current ownership record. The Harborlight had been closed since the fire, its restoration stalled by an insurance dispute. Sal’s development company now held an option to buy it.
Nico stood.
“I’m going there.”
Rosa stood too. “So am I.”
“No.”
“Clara was my sister.”
“And Lily needs you.”
Rosa’s eyes flashed. “I know exactly what Lily needs. I’ve been there every day of her life.”
Nico stopped. He apologized, then asked Naomi to arrange for a fire investigator and the detective to meet them at the theater. Rosa agreed to wait until Lily was settled with someone she knew.
Before they left, Naomi’s assistant brought in an overnight envelope delivered to the office. There was no return address.
Inside lay a child’s drawing of a blue piano.
On the back, in handwriting Rosa knew better than her own, were six words:
If I can’t come back, look left.
May you like
Clara had written them before the fire.
Someone had kept the drawing for four years. And that person had just told them where to search.
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