Chapter 5 - TERESA COSTA’S ROSARY
Gabriel stared at Leo.
“What exactly did Rocco say?”
Leo repeated it.
Word for word.
“Your father made the same mistake. He thought Mr. Costa would let him walk away with what he knew.”
Gabriel’s expression did not change.
“Mr. Costa.”
“Yes.”
“Did he say Marco?”
“No.”
That mattered.
There were two Costa men who could have fit that title twenty-two years earlier.
Marco.
And Vittorio.
Frankie saw Gabriel arrive at the same conclusion.
“You think Rocco meant your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s dead.”
“He wasn’t then.”
Frankie folded her arms.
“So now we have to consider that your father may have known someone sabotaged his own car?”
Gabriel looked at the brake hose.
“My father kept secrets professionally.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
Leo sank onto a stool.
Frankie wanted to be angry with him.
She was.
But beneath the anger was something older.
Fear.
The kind she had lived with since their father died and Leo began treating recklessness like proof he wasn’t afraid.
She turned to him.
“How long?”
Leo frowned.
“How long what?”
“Gambling like this.”
He looked away.
“Frankie—”
“How long?”
“Two years.”
Her chest tightened.
“You told me six months.”
“I know.”
“You borrowed from Dad’s old customers?”
“A little.”
“From the shop?”
“No.”
She watched him.
“Leo.”
“Not from the shop.”
Gabriel spoke from behind her.
“He’s telling the truth.”
Frankie turned.
“You suddenly read minds?”
“No. People lie differently about money.”
“That sounds like experience.”
“It is.”
Leo rubbed both hands over his face.
“I’m sorry.”
Frankie looked at him.
“Stop saying that.”
His hands dropped.
“What?”
“You say sorry like it’s a receipt. Like once you hand it over, the transaction is finished.”
He flinched.
Good.
She needed him to.
“Our father left us one thing neither of us had to be ashamed of.”
“I know.”
“And you nearly handed it to strangers because you couldn’t leave a card table.”
“I know.”
“No. You know now.”
Leo stared at the concrete.
Gabriel said nothing.
This was not his part of the conversation.
Frankie appreciated that.
Finally Leo whispered, “I kept thinking I could win back enough that you’d never know.”
“That is what every gambler says five minutes before losing more.”
“I didn’t want you cleaning up another mess.”
“Then stop making them.”
Leo nodded.
For once, he didn’t defend himself.
Frankie looked toward the rosary.
“Why Montreal?”
Leo frowned.
“What?”
“Dad bought a ticket three days after the crash.”
Gabriel picked it up.
“Two passengers.”
“One blank.”
Frankie stared at Teresa Costa’s rosary.
A terrible possibility formed.
“Your mother.”
Gabriel’s head lifted.
“What?”
“The second ticket.”
“My mother never went to Montreal.”
“She may have planned to.”
Gabriel shook his head.
“She had me.”
“She had money.”
“She had a funeral to arrange.”
“She also apparently gave my father the rosary she told you she lost.”
Gabriel looked at the beads.
He had no answer.
Frankie walked into the office.
Her father’s desk had remained almost untouched since his death five years earlier.
She opened the bottom drawer.
Old insurance envelopes.
A flashlight.
Three birthday cards he had bought and forgotten to send.
Then she saw a small wooden cigar box.
Leo stood.
“I’ve never seen that.”
Frankie opened it.
Inside lay a woman’s bracelet.
Gold.
Simple.
One tiny emerald set beside the clasp.
Gabriel sat down.
“My mother’s.”
Frankie stared at him.
“Again?”
He nodded.
“She wore that in every photograph when I was a child.”
Beneath it lay one Polaroid.
Salvatore and Teresa stood behind Moretti Auto.
Not touching.
Not smiling.
Teresa looked frightened.
Salvatore looked furious.
She held the rosary.
He held the bus ticket.
Frankie turned the picture over.
Two words.
STAY HERE.
No signature.
Gabriel stared.
“My mother wrote that.”
“You recognize the handwriting?”
“Yes.”
Frankie looked at her father’s face in the photograph.
“He planned to leave.”
“And she stopped him.”
“Why?”
Gabriel’s answer came slowly.
“Because she needed him here.”
“For you?”
“Maybe.”
Frankie studied the bracelet.
“Or because she was afraid of Marco.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
“Enough guessing.”
He took out his phone.
This time Frankie did not stop him.
“Bring Marco to Moretti Auto.”
He paused.
“No one else.”
Twenty minutes later, a dark sedan stopped outside.
Marco Costa entered alone.
Sixty-two.
Silver hair.
Navy overcoat.
Calm face.
He looked at Gabriel.
Then Frankie.
Then the brake hose on the workbench.
All the color left his face.
That was the first answer.
He knew exactly what it was.
Gabriel didn’t invite him to sit.
“Tell me why Leo Moretti was given three hundred thousand dollars in credit.”
Marco recovered quickly.
“He was a profitable player.”
“He was twenty-five thousand dollars profitable.”
Marco’s eyes moved to Leo.
“Apparently someone failed to close his account.”
“Rocco?”
“Yes.”
“You supervise Rocco.”
“I supervise forty-seven managers.”
“Did you tell him the Moretti garage could settle Leo’s debt?”
Marco looked at Frankie.
“No.”
She laughed.
“Try again.”
Marco’s expression sharpened.
“You have your father’s manners.”
“And you’ve apparently been trying to steal his building for twenty years.”
“I never tried to steal anything.”
Gabriel placed the old bus ticket beside the hose.
Marco’s face changed again.
“You knew Salvatore planned to leave.”
Marco said nothing.
“You knew he found the brake hose.”
Nothing.
Gabriel held up Teresa’s rosary.
“And my mother knew too.”
Marco finally spoke.
“Put that down.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
“Because she gave it to Salvatore for a reason.”
“What reason?”
Marco looked at him.
“To make him promise he would never tell you what happened to your father.”
Frankie felt Gabriel go completely still.
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“Why would my mother protect the man who killed her husband?”
Marco looked toward the brake hose.
“She wasn’t protecting him.”
“Then who?”
Marco’s gaze moved to Frankie.
“To protect you, she was protecting Salvatore.”
Frankie frowned.
“From you?”
Marco’s voice dropped.
“From Vittorio.”
Gabriel’s face hardened.
“My father died before Salvatore bought that ticket.”
“Yes.”
“Then that makes no sense.”
“It will.”
Marco stared at the garage floor.
“When your father realized his brakes had been tampered with, he didn’t think the crash was the first attempt.”
Gabriel frowned.
“What does that mean?”
Marco looked at him.
“The brakes had been cut before.”
Frankie stepped forward.
“That hose shows one cut.”
“That isn’t the hose from the crash.”
Silence.
Frankie looked down at the rubber in front of her.
Her mechanic’s mind raced.
“What?”
Marco pointed at the white paint mark.
“Salvatore marked every defective part he removed.”
Frankie knew that.
Her father had taught her the same system.
White paint meant removed before failure.
Red meant after.
She looked at the hose.
White.
Gabriel’s voice became dangerously quiet.
“When was this removed?”
Marco met his eyes.
“Three days before your father died.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Frankie stared at the hose.
The sabotage had been discovered.
The damaged line had been replaced.
Vittorio Costa had driven away knowing someone had tried to compromise his brakes.
Yet three days later, his brakes failed anyway.
Gabriel looked at Marco.
“Then what killed my father?”
Marco’s eyes moved toward the photograph of Teresa and Salvatore.
“Ask why your father went back to Moretti Auto at eleven-thirty the night before he died.”
Frankie looked at him.
“Why?”
Marco’s answer came quietly.
May you like
“Because Salvatore caught someone underneath Vittorio’s car.”
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