“Did anything happen last night?” I asked. “Any strange phone calls?”
She shot me an inquisitive look. “No, it was pretty quiet here.”
I had never been so happy to hear she had a quiet night in. It almost made the car chase seem surreal.
“Did you really call the police?” I asked, grinning.
“Yeah. They told me I had to wait forty-eight hours before I could fill in a missing person’s report. That pissed me off big time, but other than that—” Sylvie shook her head. “Nothing happened.” She blinked a few times, irritated.
I placed a sloppy kiss on her soft cheek. Ever since we moved to New York City, Sylvie and I had a code that if one of us didn’t get in touch before ten a.m. the next morning, that would be a red call that something happened. Even though she received the text and shouldn’t have worried, I appreciated her concern.
“I’m so sorry. I promise I won’t do that to you again,” I whispered.
“You’d better not, Brooke, because you scared the crap out of me.” The tremble in her voice didn’t go unnoticed. “Those are the papers. Looks like there’s a lot to go through.” She pointed to the large yellow folder and headed for the coffee machine.
I watched her fill the filter and add water, then opened the folder and was instantly overwhelmed by the countless sheets covered by numbers and yet more numbers. Even though I knew my way around basic accountancy, I had never glimpsed into the accounts of an estate as big as this one. As far as my amateur eye could see though, the numbers looked legit and the taxes paid.
“They look okay to me.” I closed the folder again.
Sylvie placed a cup of hot coffee in front of me and sat down. “Can I see them?”
“Sure.” Given that she had a degree in business to show off and had worked in an accountancy firm until recently, I was more than happy to oblige. I handed her the folder and took a sip of my coffee, almost burning my tongue in the process.
Sylvie began flicking through the papers.
“What do you think?” I asked her, inching closer. Two minutes passed and she didn’t reply. The silence was making me nervous, so I bumped her leg under the table.
“Sylvie?”
“Sorry?” She frowned but didn’t look up. “Did you say something?”
“Is something wrong?”
I laughed to compensate for the worry in my voice.
“There’s no debt.” She looked up, her baby blue eyes searching mine.
“So that’s a good thing then, right?”
Her grimace didn’t quite manage to erase my unease. Maybe it was the way she clutched at the papers. Or maybe it was the way her eyes kept darting across one particular page, as though her findings rattled her. But something told me things weren’t as clear as they had seemed to me.
“There’s something wrong, isn’t it?” I asked.
She held up a hand, her face scrunched up in concentration as she pulled three papers in front of her, discarding the rest, and started to compare them. I didn’t like the look on her face. My heart began to beat fast.
I walked around the table and leaned over her shoulder, trying to see what she saw. Finally, Sylvie flicked open her phone and began to punch numbers in her calculator.
“The numbers don’t add up,” she mumbled as her fingers pointed around the sheets to show me. “Looks like a loophole in earnings and write-offs. I’m wondering where the money’s going.”
Turning, she gazed up at me, her eyes reflecting my own mistrust.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry, Brooke. I’ve no idea,” she said, handing the papers back to me. “Those look like charities, but who knows. You need to talk with Jett and find someone who knows more about Italian accountancy practices. One thing’s for sure, the transactions were made at regular intervals. The last one took place last January.”
“Okay.” I blinked in succession. “People donate to charities all the time.”
Sylvie shook her head. “Look at all those zeroes. We’re talking millions and he wrote them all off. You said Jett owns a property here, meaning he more than likely has an Italian accountant to sort out his taxes.”
I knew I had reached a point where I needed help. Jett was the obvious answer.
She stopped in front of the kitchen door, her hand on the doorknob, her eyes not looking at me. “There’s something else.”
“What?” I cocked my head, regarding her intently. Whenever she tried to make something important sound casual, she started with the words ‘also there’s something else’, which instantly made the alarm bells go off at the back of my mind.
“You said Alessandro didn’t want you to make any alterations to the house, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, I’ve been wondering why there are cement bags downstairs.”
“Downstairs?”
“Yes, in the basement. While waiting for you worried sick, I might add—” she paused for effect “—I checked all the rooms in the house and stumbled upon the bags in the basement.”
“Are you sure you saw bags of cement and not—”
“Dust? Stones?” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not stupid, Brooke.”
“I never said that. It’s just weird.” Alessandro had been so adamant that nothing changed about the house. I had to see it and then ask him about it. “Show me,” I said to Sylvie. Not waiting for her answer, I walked past her, only stopping in the hall, so she could take the lead.
She guided me down the stairs and through a door into a narrow corridor that seemed to stretch on forever. The air smelled stale and dusty. The spare naked light bulbs above our heads cast moving shadows across the whitewashed walls. My shoes barely made any sound on the concrete floor, as I hurried to keep up with Sylvie’s brisk pace.
“You came down here all alone?” I asked, almost sceptical. Who would have thought my best friend—a closet claustrophobic—would enter an underground place that resembled an oversized casket with no windows and no escape exit?
“I didn’t exactly have a choice. I thought you might be trapped in the basement,” Sylvie muttered. “You’d be surprised what else I’d do for you.”
I smiled at the various memories of her shying away from elevators and cramped spaces, pretending she couldn’t breathe.
“It wasn’t easy. I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”
“Look at you. You’re conquering your fears. I’m so proud of you,” I said, meaning every word of it. She shot me a dirty look over her shoulder and muttered something like ‘just shut up.’
We reached a juncture and entered a hall with several doors. I peered into the first room. Apart from old furniture stashed in the corner, it was empty. The second and third cells looked just the same. The fourth cell was the size of a room and completely empty. Stopping in my tracks, I shuddered as unease washed over me.
“Where are the cement bags?” I asked.
“There.” Sylvie pointed to my left. I turned to follow her line of vision, only then noticing the open archway hidden by darkness. We walked in and Sylvie switched on the light bulb, bathing the fifth room in artificial brightness.
The small space was stacked with racks and bottles, which led me to believe Sylvie had stumbled upon Alessandro’s wine cellar. Stashed between the wall and a rack were two bags of cement, almost hidden from view, as though someone had forgotten them there.
“So what do you think?” Sylvie asked.
“I don’t know.” I crouched down to inspect them closer. “Maybe he needed them for renovations. It’s an old building; it probably needs a lot of that.”
It sounded plausible and yet her silence suggested she didn’t agree with me. I could see from the frown on her face that she didn’t like my answer. And neither did I.
“When I told you I looked around, I meant I really snooped around and found no signs of any recent renovations. Everything looks just old.” She made a disparaging gesture. “Why leave the bags in here with the expensive wine? Why not choose the other room where there’s plenty of space? Just look at this thing.” She pulled out a bottle of wine and handed it to me. I checked the stamped date before returning the bottle to the rack. The wine was over fifty years old and probably worth more than I used to make in a month in my old job.
A faint scent wafted past. I sniffed the air, focusing to catch it.
“Do you smell it?” I asked.
“What?”
“I think it’s paint.”
We split up inspecting the walls, brushing our fingers over the irregular dirty white surface.
“If he had someone paint them over, whoever he hired did a really bad job,” Sylvie said. “He should ask for his money back.”
Sylvie was right. The paint was so irregular and rough, it looked like a child could have done a more decent job.
“The smell’s strongest here.” I pointed to a rack and wiped my fingertips over two bottles. “There’s no dust.”
“Let me see,” Sylvie said. I stepped aside, only then noticing the white color staining the dark wood in places.
“I think someone painted this room, then set up the rack while the paint was still fresh. As for the rack, my best guess is it was moved from somewhere else, which would explain why there’s no dust on the bottles.”
We returned to the fourth room and inspected the walls. Dark traces of dust and dirt were visible where the wine racks used to stand.
“But why would Alessandro move the wine racks into a smaller room after it was painted?” Sylvie whispered behind me. “Why not just leave them here?”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I shook my head, signaling I had no idea. “I’ve been asking myself the same question.” I paced up and down the space, my eyes focused on the wall.
“What doesn’t make sense to me is why did he have just one room painted? Why not this one, too? Why not the entire basement?” I turned to look at Sylvie.
“Maybe there was no need for it. What if he had water leakage and just this one room was damp? He might have feared mold would spread through the walls,” Sylvie suggested.
“The air would smell damp. Besides, you don’t eradicate mold by painting it over. You can use an air dehumidifier. Worst case scenario, you rebuild all walls because fungus spreads fast,” I said. “Maybe that’s what he needed the cement bags for.”
It was possible and yet my words sounded unbelievable. Sylvie’s doubtful look told me she thought the same. Something just didn’t add up. The painted wall looked like an amateur had tried his hand at it. Why not hire a professional? Alessandro surely had enough money. And why do just this one wall?
My mind was spinning from so many questions and each answer I came up with led to yet another question.
“You should invite him over, you know,” Sylvie remarked.
No need to ask who she was talking about.
“Seriously?” I asked her. “Are you really okay with it?”
