Chapter 2 - THE LITTLE GIRL WITH THE NOTEBOOK
By six that evening, Dante had moved Marisol and Sofia into a secure guest apartment owned by one of his legitimate property companies.
Marisol wasn't pleased.
She stood in the doorway with her arms crossed.
“I didn't ask you to move us.”
“I know.”
“And I don't want my daughter dragged into whatever this is.”
“Neither do I.”
Marisol looked at him.
“Then tell me why we're here.”
Dante glanced toward Sofia, who was sitting on the couch drawing a cat.
“Because someone murdered my brother, and your daughter may have seen the person who visited him before he died.”
Marisol's face went pale.
“Are you saying the same person could come after her?”
“I won't pretend there's no risk.”
For a moment, she looked as though she might order him out.
Then Sofia spoke.
“Mama, Enzo said Dante would help.”
Dante closed his eyes.
Even dead, his brother was asking him to become a better man.
Marisol Vega was thirty-four, a single mother who worked as a respiratory therapist at a Chicago hospital.
She had moved into the apartment across from Enzo eighteen months earlier.
Enzo had become Sofia's favorite neighbor.
He taught her to bake cinnamon rolls.
Helped her with multiplication.
And never laughed when she insisted the building's elevator made a different sound on Tuesdays.
Dante had known Enzo was kind.
He hadn't known how much of his life he'd spent caring for people his own family barely noticed.
That night, Dante studied Sofia's notebook.
There were forty-three pages of observations.
Most were ordinary.
A neighbor's broken porch light.
A delivery van with a dented bumper.
A dog that barked every morning at six.
But several entries concerned Enzo.
September 24. Enzo got a yellow envelope.
September 26. Enzo said he found the wrong recipe.
September 29. Enzo took his cookbook to the church.
Dante stopped reading.
The wrong recipe?
He remembered Enzo's habit of hiding notes inside cookbooks.
As children, Enzo had tucked birthday cards and candy wrappers between recipe pages.
Dante picked up his phone.
“Father Bellini?”
The priest answered after three rings.
“Dante. How are you holding up?”
“I need to ask you about something Enzo brought to church.”
Silence.
Then the priest said, “You should come in person.”
At St. Jerome's, Father Bellini led Dante into a small office.
On the desk sat an old Italian cookbook.
Its cover was cracked.
The pages smelled of flour and age.
“Enzo left this with me,” the priest said.
“When?”
“Two days before he died.”
“Why?”
“He said someone might come looking for it.”
Dante opened the book.
Between recipes for bread and tomato sauce was a photograph.
It showed his father standing beside three men in front of a warehouse.
The date written on the back was October 1996.
Thirty years earlier.
Dante recognized one of the men.
Salvatore Marchesi.
The father of the man currently blamed for Enzo's murder.
But it was the fourth person who made Dante's hands go cold.
A woman stood half-hidden behind the warehouse door.
She held a baby.
May you like
And on the back of the photograph, in Enzo's handwriting, were five words.
ASK DAD ABOUT THE BABY.
