Chapter 2

Gina watched her bracelet instead.

Then she raised her head.

"A key isn't proof of anything."

Sal kept his palm beneath both medallions.

"No," he said.

"It isn't."

Several guests shifted behind Dani.

Gina straightened the cuff Sal had looked at.

"She could've taken yours."

"My keys haven't left my pocket."

"You've been drinking."

"Half a glass."

Gina turned toward the watching guests.

"Someone found something valuable in her locker."

"Now suddenly I'm the one answering questions?"

A man beside the bar nodded.

Dani saw it.

Her fingers closed around the torn wool.

Sal carefully lowered her pendant.

It settled against her navy vest again.

He kept the recovered medallion in his hand.

"Upstairs," he said.

"All four of us."

Gina started toward him.

"Sal, our daughter's reception-"

"Can continue without this."

Dot stayed beside Dani on the stairs.

Below them, a chair scraped.

Then another.

The music did not start again.

Inside the office, Sal opened a walnut cabinet.

A small steel safe stood behind its doors.

Its lock showed no scratches.

He tried the handle.

Locked.

Gina folded her arms.

"I told you I locked everything."

Sal took his keys from his pocket.

He opened the safe.

An empty velvet pouch lay inside.

Beside it sat folders and a watch box.

He pointed without touching the pouch.

"That's where I left it yesterday."

Dani remained near the office door.

"Why weren't you wearing it?"

"The clasp broke."

He showed her the recovered chain.

One end had a bent, open ring.

Her own chain was whole.

Gina looked toward the hallway.

"Staff come through here all day."

Dot shook her head.

"Not during a wedding."

"They come when I send them."

"Then say who you sent."

Gina's mouth tightened.

Sal closed the safe.

He did not call it proof.

He set the medallion on his clean handkerchief.

Then he picked up his desk phone.

"Get my lawyer on the line."

Gina reached toward the receiver.

He moved it away.

"The police are already coming," Dani said.

"They'll come upstairs," Sal answered.

Dot pulled out a chair.

Dani did not sit.

Sal noticed.

"You can leave the door open."

Dot opened it wider.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then Dani touched the letters beneath her pendant.

"Who was Frank?"

Sal's eyes moved to her face.

"Your mother never told you?"

"She said it belonged to her father."

"It did."

He pointed toward a framed opening-day picture.

Two men stood beneath the Grand Meridian sign.

One had Sal's heavy brow.

The other held a shovel.

"Frank Marchetti and my father built this place."

Dani stepped closer.

The photograph was dated 1958.

"My grandfather?"

"The man holding the shovel."

She studied his face.

There was nothing she could recognize.

No remembered voice.

No holiday table.

Just a stranger behind glass.

Gina spoke from beside the cabinet.

"Renata worked here, too."

Dot looked at her.

"So did half the neighborhood."

"And then she stole from us."

Sal's jaw moved.

He did not contradict her.

Dani turned away from the photograph.

"What did you say?"

Gina gave Sal a quick glance.

"Your mother left with things that weren't hers."

Dot stepped between them.

"That's what you told everybody."

"It's what happened."

"You were in this office before the ceremony."

Gina lifted her key bracelet.

"I run the place."

"Alone," Dot said.

"With the door shut."

Dani looked from one woman to the other.

That did not prove a theft.

Dot seemed to know it.

She gripped the chair back.

"I didn't see what you did in here."

"Then stop talking."

"But I remember what you asked downstairs."

Gina's fingers stopped against her pearls.

Dot faced Sal.

"Gina asked for Dani's locker number before anyone reported the medallion missing."