Chapter 5 - The Secret Inside Daniel's Coat
I pulled Daniel's navy-blue coat from the closet.
For eighteen months, I'd been unable to bring myself to wash it.
It still carried the faint smell of his shaving soap.
I pressed it against my face.
And for one terrible moment, I was standing in our kitchen again, watching him leave for work.
Before everything changed.
“Rachel?”
Luca's voice brought me back.
“Are you all right?”
I nodded, although I wasn't.
Molly stood beside Denise, watching quietly.
“Daddy fixed the pocket,” she reminded me.
I laid the coat across our kitchen table.
The lining was worn near the left side.
One section had been repaired with crooked black stitches.
Daniel had never been good at sewing.
He'd once spent twenty minutes trying to reattach a button to Molly's school sweater.
I remembered laughing at him.
Now my hands trembled as I carefully loosened the stitches.
Something slipped beneath the lining.
A small blue notebook.
I stared at it.
Daniel's handwriting covered the first page.
Not financial calculations.
Names.
Twelve of them.
Beside each name were an address, a date, and an amount of money.
Luca leaned closer.
“May I?”
I handed him the book.
He turned the pages slowly.
“Maple Street House,” he murmured.
Then his expression changed.
“These are emergency housing payments.”
“What does that mean?”
“My father's foundation helped elderly tenants when they couldn't afford temporary housing. If a building needed repairs, the fund paid for apartments or hotel rooms.”
He looked at the amounts.
“Daniel was tracking twelve families.”
I moved beside him.
“Why would he hide their names?”
Luca ran his finger down the page.
“Because someone didn't want these payments examined.”
At the bottom, Daniel had written a total.
$86,000.
The exact amount he'd been convicted of stealing.
I gripped the table.
“That's the money.”
Luca nodded.
“But these entries describe approved assistance. They don't prove anyone received it.”
I stared at him.
“Daniel told me the money hadn't been stolen.”
“He may have meant it was redirected. That's different from saying the transfer was authorized.”
It was the first explanation that made sense.
Not enough to free my husband.
But enough to make his conviction look different.
Denise brought Molly into the living room and turned on her favorite cartoon.
I was grateful.
There were some things an eight-year-old didn't need to hear.
Luca turned another page.
“Did Daniel ever mention these families?”
“Only once.”
“What did he say?”
“He came home upset about an elderly woman who'd spent three nights sleeping in a recliner because she couldn't afford a motel.”
“Do you remember her name?”
I shook my head.
“He said she reminded him of his grandmother.”
Luca looked down again.
“My father would've wanted to know about that.”
I searched the remaining pages.
There were dates when payments had supposedly been approved.
And beside several entries, Daniel had drawn small circles.
Some were filled in.
Others were empty.
“What do those mean?”
“I don't know,” Luca admitted.
Then I noticed something.
Three names had been crossed out.
Underneath one, Daniel had written a single word.
Unpaid.
My mouth went dry.
“Mr. Moretti, if these people never received the money, why did your foundation say Daniel stole it?”
Luca looked at me.
“That's what we're going to establish.”
His phone vibrated.
He glanced at the screen, then silenced it without answering.
“I've asked an independent accountant to review the foundation's transactions. Someone Charles hasn't employed.”
“Will he cooperate?”
“He won't have a choice about whether I examine my own foundation.”
I remembered the way Charles had looked at Molly's drawing.
“Why was he searching for this coat?”
Luca didn't answer immediately.
“Maybe he knew Daniel kept records that weren't included in the criminal case.”
“Then he knew Daniel might be innocent.”
“Maybe.”
I hated that word.
Maybe.
My entire life had become a collection of maybes.
Maybe Daniel would come home sooner.
Maybe Molly would stop asking why he missed her birthdays.
Maybe one day people would stop looking at my wedding ring and seeing a criminal's wife.
Luca closed the notebook.
“Rachel, I'm going to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Would you and Molly consider staying at the mansion for a little while?”
I looked toward the living room.
“Vanessa lives there.”
“She won't be making decisions about your employment or your daughter.”
“That's not the only problem.”
“I know.”
He lowered his voice.
“Charles has approached your child. Someone has been looking for your husband's coat. I don't like either of those things.”
I thought about the elderly man standing beside my daughter's school.
Then I thought about Daniel.
He had made me promise to protect Molly.
I wasn't going to let pride interfere with that.
“All right,” I whispered.
“But I won't have her treated like a servant's child.”
Luca's expression hardened.
“She'll be treated like a guest.”
We packed two small suitcases.
Molly insisted on bringing her stuffed rabbit, which had one missing ear.
I brought Daniel's coat.
And the photograph from our wedding day.
In it, we were barely more than kids.
Daniel was laughing because the photographer had told him to stop looking at me.
I slipped the photograph beside the notebook.
Before we left, Luca asked to examine one last page.
He held it beneath the kitchen light.
“Rachel, look at this.”
I leaned over his shoulder.
There was another payment.
$8,600.
The recipient's name was written clearly.
June Ward.
Vanessa's mother.
I stared at the date beside it.
Then remembered what Vanessa had said about her mother's death.
June Ward had died five years earlier.
But this payment had supposedly been made less than two years ago.
I looked at Luca.
“Mr. Moretti, how could the foundation send money to a woman who was already dead?”
He turned the notebook toward the light.
May you like
For the first time that night, he looked genuinely frightened.
Someone had used a dead woman's name to make part of the missing eighty-six thousand dollars disappear.
