Chapter 6 - STATION NINE
Station Nine was not a police station, a railway stop or a warehouse. It was the name my father had given his smallest woodworking bench, a scarred oak table he used when I was a child. He called it that because the ninth bench at his first apprenticeship had been the only one whose legs stood level on the workshop floor.
I remembered him tapping its surface twice before beginning work. “Listen to the wood,” he used to say. “It tells you what it wants to become.”
For years the bench had stood in a storage unit my mother could no longer afford. We had kept it because selling the tools felt like admitting he would never return. Now Serena's message made that dusty, forgotten furniture seem more important than any jeweled object in the Moretti mansion.
Mara arranged for us to visit the unit with the manager and a professional photographer. I insisted on coming even though my ankle made the walk from the parking lot slow. My mother carried the key on the chain around her neck.
“Your father told me not to sell Station Nine,” she said as we entered. “I thought he was sentimental.”
The bench sat beneath a folded quilt, exactly where we had left it. Its surface was grooved and polished by decades of tools. I traced one scar with my left hand while Mara photographed the drawers.
A small brass plate bore the number 9. Beneath it, the wood was slightly different in color. My father had often hidden spare screws in false compartments because, he said, a good craftsman needed to be prepared.
The storage manager watched while Mara lifted the plate using a small screwdriver borrowed from the tool chest. Behind it was a narrow slot holding a waxed-paper packet. Inside were six contact sheets of photographs, a handwritten index and a letter addressed to HELEN AND EMILY, IF YOU EVER NEED THE TRUTH.
My mother sat down on an upturned wooden crate before she opened it. I could see the effort it took her to keep her hands steady.
Peter had written that Serena asked him to preserve duplicate images after North Star's records were threatened. He had photographed each painting and each crate before the bonded shipment, placing a measuring ruler beside the frames to identify them accurately. He wrote that if anything happened to him, the packet should go to an independent lawyer rather than any employee of Richard Bellini.
The last paragraph broke me.
Helen, I know I've brought worry home. I wanted our little girl to grow up believing that ordinary work could be honorable. If I have put you in danger by refusing to sign a false repair report, I am sorry. I would make the same choice again, but I wish it had cost you less.
My mother pressed the letter to her heart. For a long time neither of us spoke. I remembered his rough palms and the way he always checked that my bicycle tires were inflated. I thought about all the years I had believed his work was invisible to the world.
“He knew,” she whispered. “He knew someone might hurt him.”
“He didn't know what would happen,” I said gently. “But he wanted us to have this.”
We photographed the contents in place and transferred them to the care of an independent evidence custodian. I kept a scan of the letter and a copy of the photographer's inventory, not the originals. The criminal investigator assigned to the art case, Detective Amara Lewis, met us outside the storage building and took a detailed statement.
The contact sheets showed more than paintings. One image included a black delivery van parked outside a loading bay, its company number visible. Another showed Richard Bellini speaking with Calvin Rusk near a scaffold stack. Both men were dated in the photographer's notation to the week before my father's fatal accident.
“That gives us people and dates to verify,” Detective Lewis said. “It doesn't tell us what they were planning. But it matters.”
The following day she interviewed Rusk. He had retired to Indiana and initially denied working for the Bellinis. When confronted with invoices bearing his signature, he admitted supervising repairs on their storage properties. He denied wrongdoing in my father's death and asked for a lawyer. Detective Lewis promised nothing beyond a proper investigation.
I had expected to feel triumphant when the pictures were found. Instead I felt frightened by how easily a powerful person could turn an ordinary name into a footnote. My father had been one of dozens of workers keeping the buildings standing. He had never been on an invitation list, never spoken beneath a chandelier, never held a title that made other people listen.
Yet he had seen what was wrong and left a record.
Serena came to Chicago two days later under an arrangement approved by her attorney. Luca had rented a private meeting room at an independent gallery instead of insisting she return to the mansion. Nina chose to stay with a trusted family friend. She had schoolwork and a life to protect.
When Serena saw the photographs, she touched the image of the blue-starred violin with one fingertip. “Peter took this on the Tuesday,” she said. “I remember because he complained the light in the loading bay was too yellow. He brought a lamp from home.”
“Can you identify the other painting?” Detective Lewis asked.
“Yes. It's called The Orchard Window. It belongs to a family in Prague. Their attorney gave us permission to inspect it. Richard's people replaced the backboard, but the corner joints in Peter's photograph are original.”
She showed the detective an archived certificate. The document contained dates and photographs consistent with those in my father's packet. The discrepancy between genuine and substituted objects could now be examined by specialists.
Luca sat at the end of the conference table, listening without interrupting. When Serena finished, he asked a question that seemed to hurt him.
“Were you afraid I would believe Richard even if you came home?”
“Yes,” she answered. “He controlled the correspondence. I couldn't tell who was speaking for you.”
“I should have questioned him.”
“You can question him now.”
Luca nodded. It wasn't forgiveness, exactly. But it was the beginning of a different conversation.
Afterward Serena asked me to walk with her through the gallery's quiet sculpture courtyard. I moved slowly with my ankle brace, and she matched my pace without making a show of it.
“You remind me of your father,” she said.
“I mostly remember him telling me not to lean on the workbench.”
“He used to tell me not to touch the paintings with bare hands.” She smiled. “Then he'd offer me a clean cloth and let me examine the frames.”
I looked at the simple bronze sculpture beside us. “I've never known much about art.”
“You noticed that the envelope needed to survive more than the painting. That's a form of understanding.”
“Or desperation.”
“Both can be true.”
She told me that, for years, she had dreamed of returning to restoration work openly. She could repair frames and bind books under a borrowed name, but she missed teaching people how to recognize a work's history. She hoped the investigation would eventually let her reclaim that part of her life.
“I don't want my brother to build me a gallery,” she said. “I want to apply for a job and get hired because I can do it.”
I laughed softly. “I know exactly what you mean.”
At the close of the meeting, Detective Lewis announced that a court had issued orders preserving relevant records from Richard's companies and preventing disposal of disputed artworks while ownership was examined. The private auction of The Blue Violin had been postponed by the auction house pending provenance review. No arrests had been made. Investigators were still checking the recordings, finance records and old fire reports.
Vanessa's lawyer issued a public statement denying wrongdoing. Richard's spokesman called the allegations a coordinated attack on a respected art dealer. Neither statement mentioned my injury or Serena's daughter.
That evening Luca asked whether I would meet him for coffee in a neutral place. I agreed, but I chose the café and insisted on paying for my own drink. He didn't argue.
We sat beside a window while rain moved across the street. His tattoos looked less intimidating around a paper cup than they did in the mansion. I told him about my father's letter, and he listened without trying to turn the grief into a solution.
“Do you still think of the painting?” he asked.
“Every time I close my eyes. I can hear the fabric tearing.”
“I'm going to have it conserved if it's possible. Not to hide what happened. To keep the record.”
“Can they repair something like that?”
“They can stabilize it. They can't make the damage vanish.”
I looked at him. “Maybe that's the point.”
He lowered his gaze. “I've spent years trying to make difficult things vanish by paying people to handle them. This time I need to see them.”
The café lights reflected against the wet glass. For a moment I felt an unfamiliar warmth. Not a promise of romance, not yet. Just the sensation of being spoken to as an equal by someone who had once been almost impossible to approach.
My phone rang. Detective Lewis was calling.
“Emily,” she said, “we've located a witness from the night your father died. He remembers hearing an argument on the scaffolding floor. He'd been afraid to come forward because he worked for Bellini contractors.”
I gripped my cup.
“Does he know what happened?”
“He doesn't claim to know everything. But he says your father was handed a document to sign, and he refused.”
“Who handed it to him?”
She paused. “We are verifying his identification. I wanted you to hear it from me before rumors spread.”
I looked across the table at Luca. He saw my expression and waited.
The detective continued. “One more thing. The witness says the document was not about paintings.”
May you like
My pulse accelerated.
“It was an order to certify that the warehouse fire exit had never been locked.”
