Chapter 3
The first contradiction came from Lily.
Not because Dante interrogated her.
He refused to.
A child therapist recommended by Rebecca met Lily at the estate two days later.
Dante stayed outside the room.
Maria remained nearby because Lily trusted her.
The therapist asked ordinary questions.
What songs did Mommy play?
What did Victoria play?
Had Lily heard Victoria play it before?
Lily said no.
Then the therapist asked how she knew it was Mommy’s song.
Lily answered:
“Mommy goes slow there.”
She tapped three little fingers against the table.
“Miss Victoria did it fast.”
The therapist later explained that Lily was not remembering a title.
She was recognizing structure.
Grace had played the melody often enough that her daughter knew a specific change in tempo.
Victoria had known not merely the tune.
She knew the entire sequence.
Dante went back through everything Victoria had told him about music.
She had played piano since childhood.
She had studied at Northwestern for two years before changing majors.
She performed occasionally at charity events.
All true.
None explained Grace’s private melody.
Rebecca began checking whether Grace had ever performed it publicly.
No program listed it.
No family member remembered hearing it outside the estate.
Maria insisted Grace never wrote formal sheet music for it.
“She improvised.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I asked for a copy.”
Maria smiled sadly.
“Mrs. Moretti said if she wrote it down, she’d start fixing it. She liked that it belonged to Lily exactly as it was.”
That made the question narrower.
To know the whole piece, Victoria almost certainly had to hear Grace play it.
Not once.
Probably more than once.
Dante called Adrian.
“Where did you meet Victoria?”
“A charity event.”
“Which one?”
Adrian named a children’s hospital fundraiser.
Rebecca checked.
Both had attended.
But the fundraiser happened eleven months after Grace died.
That proved only that Adrian and Victoria could truthfully claim to have been in the same public room.
It did not prove that was their first meeting.
Rebecca found something else.
Grace had chaired a small charitable foundation called the Moretti Family Arts Fund.
Most of its work involved music programs in public schools and hospital pediatric units.
Adrian oversaw its finances on behalf of the family.
Dante had never paid much attention to it.
Grace did.
Two months before her death, she requested a complete vendor review.
The review was never completed.
“Why not?” Dante asked.
Rebecca looked at the file.
“It says the chair withdrew the request.”
“Grace?”
“Her name is on the email.”
Dante read it.
One sentence.
No further review is necessary. Please close the matter.
He stared at the date.
Grace sent it at 9:18 p.m.
Dante remembered that night.
May you like
They had been at dinner together in Wisconsin until nearly eleven.
Grace had not touched her phone for most of the meal.
