Chapter 2
The head groundskeeper was a sixty-three-year-old man named Samuel Dean.
He had worked on the estate for seventeen years.
Isabella had trusted him enough to choose plants with her during the final months of her life.
When Alessio called him onto the terrace, Samuel looked at the destroyed beds and went pale.
“I didn’t authorize this.”
“Who did?”
Samuel glanced toward Claudia.
She crossed her arms.
“I asked for the garden to be refreshed.”
Samuel shook his head.
“You told the temporary crew to remove the beds.”
Claudia’s expression sharpened.
“For replanting.”
“Not all of them.”
Samuel pointed toward the greenhouse wall.
“You specifically told them not to touch the white irises.”
Alessio looked at him.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
The luncheon had been planned for almost two weeks.
Claudia had volunteered to oversee the garden preparations.
Alessio had thought nothing of it.
She was family.
That assumption was becoming expensive.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked.
Samuel looked uncomfortable.
“Mrs. Ventresca said you knew.”
Alessio’s eyes moved toward Claudia.
There it was again.
His name being used as permission.
Claudia laughed nervously.
“This is ridiculous.”
Samuel ignored her.
“She said Isabella wanted the garden changed eventually.”
Alessio looked at the uprooted flowers.
“Isabella said the opposite.”
Everyone knew it.
Even Ruby knew it.
Marco stepped forward.
“Maybe Claudia wanted something new.”
“Then why leave one strip?”
No answer.
Samuel looked toward the irises.
“There’s something else.”
Claudia’s head turned sharply.
Samuel saw it.
That made him hesitate.
Alessio spoke more quietly.
“Say it.”
Samuel rubbed soil from his palms.
“Mrs. Isabella planted those flowers herself.”
Alessio knew that.
But Samuel continued.
“Not originally.”
“What do you mean?”
“They weren’t part of the first garden plan.”
The white irises appeared approximately eight months before Isabella died.
One morning she had called Samuel to the greenhouse and asked him to clear a narrow section beside the wall.
She planted the irises personally.
No assistants.
No gardening crew.
Afterward she made one strange request.
“She told me never to move them unless she asked.”
Alessio felt a dull pressure behind his ribs.
“Did she say why?”
“No.”
Claudia suddenly interrupted.
“She was sick by then.”
Samuel looked at her.
“She knew exactly what she was doing.”
Marco’s jaw tightened.
Alessio noticed.
Then Samuel remembered another detail.
“About three weeks after the funeral, someone dug around them.”
Alessio went still.
“Who?”
“I never saw.”
The disturbance had been small.
Someone had loosened the soil near the greenhouse wall and replaced it badly.
Samuel fixed it the next morning.
He had assumed an animal had been digging.
Until Claudia visited the garden several weeks later and asked him an unusual question.
“What question?”
May you like
Samuel looked directly at Alessio.
“She asked how deep Isabella normally planted things.”
