16. Chapter 16

sixteen

Athena

I t was way too early in the day to crawl back in bed and sleep, so after I got dressed in some comfort clothes of shorts and a tank I decided to get some more things taken care of around the house.

I’d been trying to get one big project done each week and one little project each day since I’d come to town a couple weeks ago. I hadn’t decided if I was going to sell the house or keep it to rent out. Hell, I’d even been floating the possibility of moving back home and living in the house myself, but at this point I didn’t want to be in the same state as Lucas Blake, nevertheless the same city.

No, I was going back to Seattle once this mess was over, but I still needed to make improvements to the house for future buyers or tenants, whichever way I decided to go.

I found a screwdriver and tightened the loose knobs on the kitchen cabinets. I got out a stepstool and cleared the cobwebs, then got down on my hands and knees to scrub the baseboards. Mom understandably let a lot of the cleaning slide when she was sick but that meant there was a lot of dust and grime to deal with along with everything else.

I made my way back up to the attic. I began tackling one box tucked away up there at a time, but all that halted when I found information Mom never wanted me to see—information she was squirreling away for a rainy day, but died before that could happen.

Her death certificate said she died of a blot clot in her lungs that developed due to her drug regimen from the cancer, but the truth was a lot more grisly. Her doctors couldn’t treat the blood clot they detected because an anti-coagulant would cause her brain to bleed out because, well, she had a subdural hematoma in her head from an assault.

But the assault and resulting brain bleed wasn’t her cause of death, the blood clot was, so her death couldn’t be investigated as a murder. And a frail woman with cancer could have just as easily had a fall that caused her head injury. With no witnesses, what was the proof she was ever attacked?

The proof was in the box Margaret Keenan had hidden in her attic.

I wiped the tears that were forming before they could fall, then brought the whole box back downstairs. The job at the Morelli law office was my last lead; I needed to reread all the information Mom collected to prepare me for the second interview. I didn’t know how much alone time I might have at any point in time, and I needed to know instantly if something I got my hands on would be useful or correlate with the strands of evidence I already had .

My mom was an accountant, working for Hirsch they were definitely hiding something.

I pinned up the transcripts of the phone calls, starting out normal, becoming increasingly unhinged as Carlo Morelli first explained things away, next told her to mind her own business, and finally resorted to thinly veiled threats to her and any family she may have if she didn’t keep her nose out of it. I used masking tape to attach the ziplock baggy of the tapes themselves to the board as more proof.

My mother wasn’t a forensic accountant by trade, but she clearly had her hackles raised and continued to investigate all she saw in the final week she worked with the Morellis, as witnessed by the dates at the bottom of the printed documents. I pulled out newspaper and blog articles she’d gathered speculating on the nature of the Morelli family, and more about their various business interests in San Francisco from the law office itself, to a small Italian restaurant, to a little clock repair shop and beyond. I reread her notes wondering why these other businesses weren’t ever mentioned in the documents she received, wondering where all the transfers of funds went to if not to another one of their businesses.

My lip trembled, but I held in the tears when I unfolded the paper that was tied around a rock that still sat in the box, the note a not-so-thinly veiled threat.

Back off. A woman in your condition shouldn’t extend this much effort or you’ll put yourself at risk of a fall.

My mom’s own handwriting listed a date at the top of the note. Her body was found at the base of her stairs three days later. The coroner’s working theory was that the blood clot in her lungs affected her so thoroughly that she had a fall down the stairs, but that was only the logical conclusion if you just looked at the surface facts. All of this other information added up to something much more malicious.

None of this evidence was a smoking gun, but it clearly pointed in one direction. If anyone other than me had seen this, it would have been enough to open an investigation. But Mom was cautious, hiding everything.

I was never a very careful person.

Martin, the MCBNG contact Lucas wondered over only a couple days before, didn’t know everything I was getting myself into, but I knew that someone needed to know something about what I was doing in San Francisco. If I got into some serious shit someone needed to know to call the cops and tell them I was in trouble.

I had a dedicated check-in time with him every day. Martin knew to call the cops immediately if I didn’t check in with a previously discussed safe word within thirty minutes of that check-in time, giving me a window of time in case I missed the check-in text. He also knew the PO box address where I sent photocopies of everything I found, along with a detailed account of anything else I managed to add to my growing list of evidence.

Martin didn’t know any details—why would I trust a cheating bastard neighbor with the specifics?—but it was nice to have some backup. He knew I was out of town, trying to find my mother’s killer. He didn’t approve of my methods, understandable since they included illegally blackmailing him and forcing him to risk his job at the phone company, but he at least had some sympathy in his voice during our daily calls. He gave me the info I needed to pinpoint Leo Lombardi’s location so when I logged into my fake Tinder account my location was close enough to his that I just had to pop up as a match. And he hooked me up with his log-in information so I could home in on Antonio’s exact location in the airport.

He probably could have gone to the cops, gotten me disbarred. Hell, maybe he could have kept the information about his affairs away from his wife, but he never tried. He just helped me. It wasn’t a perfect relationship, but Martin was the closest thing I had to a friend. We didn’t exactly like each other, but there was a sense of trust: that he was giving me solid intel, helping however he could, and that I wouldn’t tell his wife.

Lucas Blake refused to even consider trusting me. Why was a stand-up, law-abiding FBI agent less trusting and trustworthy than an adulterer that happened to live across the hall from me?

I grunted in frustration. I didn’t want to start thinking about him right now.

I started pinning up my own evidence that I’d collected in the short time I’d been here. It was all circumstantial, but combined with what my mom had and whatever else the police collected regarding other Morelli investigations being conducted by the FBI, it had to lead somewhere.

The connection between Leo Lombardi and the burner phone Antonio Conti had on him before he fired a gun in an airport.

The messages—however embarrassing they were—between Leo and myself that served as a motive for his alleged attack against me at the diner and his direction to Antonio at the airport.

I included a link to my google docs, where I’d uploaded the audio files I secretly recorded from all my contacts with people in the Morelli organization: initial phone call with Carlo Morelli, my “date” with Leo, my run-in with Antonio at the airport (and subsequent meeting of Lucas Blake), and my first interview with Carlo and Angelo Morelli. If I wasn’t with Lucas when I received the phone call asking for the second interview I would have recorded that as well.

Then I pinned up the transcripts from those interactions, taking a leaf out of my mom’s book. Her thorough actions were what helped me put it all together, and I wanted to help the next person if my mission ended in failure.

Once everything was in place on the board, I took the empty cardboard box outside to the recycling bin and came back in to write out my notes on what I expected to happen next, what I thought I could achieve with my second interview.

I didn’t really think I was in danger anymore. Everything I’d seen and read implied that the Morellis liked to keep the dirty side of their business away from their allegedly clean law office front, so I didn’t expect Leo Lombardi to show up and blow my cover when I went in again. But just in case something went wrong, I wanted the police to have everything safe and sound, evidence set up and organized for their ease.

Even if Lucas was leaving me alone from now on, I knew he was still on the case and if I went missing he’d come right over and find everything. Maybe he’d finally trust me and my intentions if I was dead .

I’d just finished writing out the last of my notes when a thundering noise came from my front door. Someone was banging on it with their whole fist like their life depended on it.

Was it a neighbor, someone in danger? Was I in danger? Either way, the door was still unlocked from my recent trip outside, so I needed to get to the peephole to see if it was friend or foe, if I should open the door or flip the deadbolt and hook the chain.

I was halfway to the foyer before the knocking paused.

“Athena Kane!” I held my breath. Why was Lucas Blake back here after I sent him away? “Open up this fucking door right now before I break it down! You’re under arrest!”