I parked near the Episcopal church and walked over to MacDonald’s Fine Antiques. The Windsor rocking chair that had been in the window when I bought my clock was gone and the artwork had changed. Mac must have had a busy few days.
I could see him through the large glass window, hunched over something at the partners desk where he did his bookkeeping and paperwork. He looked up when he heard the door chime as I walked in.
“Hello, Lucie,” he said. “Thanks for coming by.”
Lucie. Usually it was “sugar” or “honey.” Lucie was for when he was upset.
“Hi, Mac.” I was still wearing the sunglasses.
Under other circumstances, he would have gotten up and given me a friendly kiss, but today we both were acting unnaturally stiff and formal toward each other. His behavior was probably due to last night’s conversation. Mine, because of what I was about to ask him, which I knew he wasn’t going to like one bit. Maybe even tell me to mind my own business.
Could I have been wrong about Mac? He couldn’t have been my intruder, but had he sent someone to deliver the message to stay out of his family’s affairs? Bobby and I had dismissed him as a possibility when we spoke yesterday at the house, but as Eli had said earlier, that was then.
Now I knew things I hadn’t known a day ago. Or thought I knew them.
“Come on over here and have a seat.” He sounded grudging. “I presume you brought the photo?”
I took off my sunglasses. “I did.”
His eyes grew wide with shock. “Dear Lord. You poor child. Have they found who did this?”
“Not yet. Can I ask you something before I give you the photo?” I sat in the chair next to his desk.
“About what?”
“Your grandmother, Granny Chase. Pauline Islington Chase.”
“What about her?” He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap, still visibly distressed by my big black eye. Maybe I should cross him off my list of suspects after all.
“Did she ever go by Izzy? And was she friends with a woman named Zara Tomassi?”
I so wish the child were mine. Not an affair between Zara and Izzy. Izzy, who didn’t have a child of her own at that point but desperately wanted one, and Zara, who didn’t want her own baby, an anchor to tie her down and keep her from being the fun-loving party girl she’d always been. So when Zara died, it was simple: Izzy took her friend’s baby and raised the child as her own.
The look in Mac’s eyes told me everything I needed to know. “How did you find out? Who told you?”
“No one told me. I guessed once Thelma mentioned your grandmother’s maiden name was Islington. All this time I thought Zara Tomassi’s best friend, Izzy, was a nickname for someone named Isabel. Your aunt Roxy was Zara’s daughter, wasn’t she? Your grandmother adopted her and raised her as her own child after Zara died.”
The color drained from his face and he reached out to support himself against his desk, as if the floor had tilted sideways. “Who else knows about this besides you?”
“Right now, no one,” I said. “Do you know what happened to Zara, Mac? How did she die? Was she murdered?”
“You have no right to be asking these questions,” he said, still pale, but his voice crackled with anger.
“Maybe not.” I held my ground. “But I know two people who do. Quinn and Gino Tomassi. They have the right to know.”
“Is that why Gino’s in town?” Mac asked. “To see his cousin?”
It was my turn to be caught off guard. If Mac knew that Gino and Quinn were related, did he also know about the blackmail? Could he have been the one who found a copy of Roxy’s birth certificate, which proved she was Zara’s daughter?
Was Mac blackmailing Gino?
“Gino was invited to the White House state dinner for the Italian prime minister. So he stopped by to see Quinn,” I said. It was a truthful, if incomplete, answer. “I didn’t realize you knew they were related.”
“Of course I knew,” he said in a testy voice. “I made it my business to find out everything about Roxy once I learned who she really was.”
“Last night on the phone, you said Roxy found out she was adopted a few weeks ago,” I said. “Either someone told her or she came across something that proved it—a letter or a document. I was wondering which it was.”
He glared at me. “You’re so good at guessing, you tell me.”
I picked up a pen and spun it around on his desk like a compass needle while I thought about it. The pen stopped, the tip aimed at Mac’s heart. “Not a person. Not someone. She found something.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, who knew, besides you? Everyone else is dead, right?”
He gave a jerky nod of assent. “My grandparents kept Roxy’s adoption a secret while she and my mother were growing up. Even Mother didn’t learn the truth until Pauline was on her deathbed.”
“So Roxy must have come across a document,” I said. “A letter or something else she found. Her birth certificate?”
His eyes flickered. “It was a letter. Taped to the top of a drawer of a small Queen Anne chest that used to be in the front hall of her home. Roxy suddenly decided she wanted it moved to Foxhall Manor. So I had Will take it over.”
That explained the indentations I’d noticed in Roxy’s carpet from a relatively new piece of furniture. And if it wasn’t Roxy’s birth certificate, then Mac wasn’t the one threatening Gino. In fact, I was starting to doubt he was even aware that Gino was being blackmailed. Which meant at least one other person did know Roxy was Zara’s daughter: whoever had the birth certificate.
“What was in the letter?”
One of the wall clocks chimed the quarter hour, out of sync with all the others in the store. Mac looked as if he still didn’t want to discuss this, but I waited him out.
“Roxy’s adoption papers,” he said finally.
“Then why did Faith hear Roxy shouting that she wanted to know the truth? Did she mean the truth about who her birth parents were?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell her?”
“I told her I didn’t know.”
“But you do know. Maybe you didn’t want to tell her because of the circumstances surrounding Zara’s death?”
“I refuse to discuss that subject.”
“You know what happened to Zara, don’t you?” I said. “And if you do, you’re the only one who does. Gino Tomassi has no idea about any of this. Zara’s name was banned forever from all family conversation once Johnny Tomassi married his second wife, Angelica.”
His eyes narrowed. “Gino coming to town has something to do with Roxy, doesn’t it?”
“Gino doesn’t know that Roxy was the daughter of his grandfather’s first wife. He has no clue.”
He gave me a shrewd look. “Gino may not know about Roxy, but I’ll bet he does know about Zara,” he said. “He came to see Quinn because he’s trying to find out what happened to Zara’s daughter. Am I right?”
He deserved an answer to that after what he’d just told me. “Gino never knew Zara’s baby lived, so, yes, he was trying to find out about her.”
“Why?” he said. “Did he think he’d inherit any money from Roxy’s estate?”
“Good Lord, no. Gino’s worth millions. He doesn’t need her money.”
“Then what is it?”
There wasn’t any way to avoid telling him. Besides, this conversation had just eliminated any reason for Gino to pay the blackmailer. Mac could tell Gino what he needed to know and save him a quarter of a million dollars.
“Someone found Roxy’s birth certificate and that complicates matters for Gino because now Uma might be a potential heir to the Tomassi Family Vineyard,” I said. “For enough money, the blackmailer will hand over the birth certificate.”
“Someone has Roxy’s birth certificate?” He seemed stunned.
I nodded. “I think you and Gino and Uma and Quinn need to sit down and talk this through. Gino always thought Zara’s baby didn’t survive her mother’s accident, so he had no idea there were any other potential heirs to the Tomassi Vineyard. It’s time to get everything out in the open.”
“No. I’ve done all the talking I want to do.”
I reached over and took his hands in mine. “Mac, this has to end. I can set something up at the winery where you’ll have complete privacy. I’m sure I can get Gino and Quinn there. I can probably even get Uma to come, if you don’t want to ask her. But you have all the answers. You need to do this.”
For a long time, he didn’t speak, but his shoulders grew more stooped. I guessed it might be the weariness of carrying around the burden of what he had known for so long. Izzy, his grandmother, must have known the truth about what happened to Zara—whether her death was really an accident or a murder that had been covered up.
“Fine.” He gave a tired shrug. “If they agree to a meeting and you make the arrangements, I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.”
He jerked his hands from mine. “Don’t thank me. It’s not going to be the comforting balm you seem to think it will be.”
“Do you know who Roxy’s father was?” I asked. “I assume you know that Zara was having an affair with Warren Harding. It sounded … complicated.”
“My God,” he said. “How did you find out about that? From something Lucky left behind?”
“Lucky Montgomery?” I was dumbfounded. “She was involved in this, too?”
He gave me a smug look that sent a shiver up my spine. “You didn’t know about your own family’s role in this? Well, isn’t that rich? I told you, not everyone will be happy with what I have to say. You ought to be at this meeting, too, Lucie.”
“Oh, I’ll be there,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
“I need to go pick up Will,” he said. “And now if you have the photo of Roxy and Tommy Van Allen, I’d quite like to have it. I’ll give it to Uma when I’m at the house.”
I got it out of my purse and gave him the envelope. I already knew he would wait until I was gone before he looked at it.
“Before I go, I have one more question,” I said, putting on my sunglasses.
“I might not answer it.”
“Come on, Mac. I don’t understand how everyone involved managed to keep this quiet for so long,” I said. “Someone had to forge documents that listed your grandparents as Roxy’s mother and father, since no one was supposed to know who her birth parents were.”
He gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Apparently, it was quite easy. The Tomassis and Zara’s family were well connected in the Catholic Church. Johnny Tomassi even made sacramental wine for the Church during Prohibition, and there was a priest who became a close family friend and also served on the board of the Tomassi Family Vineyard. Roxy was born at home, not in a hospital. It was easy to falsify the documents.”
“A Catholic priest helped them?” I said.
“That’s what my mother told me,” he said. “Why, is something wrong?”
“No,” I said. “You just reminded me of something. We have some more winter coats that Frankie collected at the vineyard. I need to take them over to Veronica House, so I’d better get going. I don’t want to miss seeing Father Niall. I’ll call you later, Mac.”
I left before he even said good-bye, my mind reeling with what he had just said. Mac wouldn’t tell Roxy the truth about her birth parents, so who else would she have confided in, asked for help?
Her priest and confessor, Father Niall O’Malley, perhaps? He would keep her secret. His vows bound him to do so, even—as he told me—if someone confessed a murder.
Could it be that Father Niall figured out how to get hold of Roxy’s birth certificate … and then blackmailed Gino Tomassi once he realized who she was? Would he?
Uma Lawrence had crudely implied that Roxy might have slighted her charities in leaving all of her money to her granddaughter, but maybe her comment hadn’t been too far off the mark. Had Father Niall been expecting money from Roxy’s estate to help him bail Veronica House out of its financial problems caused by the missing money? And then when he didn’t get it, did he resort to plan B? Get it from a member of the family that had given up Roxy as a baby?
I got into my car and called Quinn. “I know who Zara’s daughter was. And her granddaughter. And I think I might know who is blackmailing Gino. I’m driving back to the vineyard from Mac’s place right now to pick you up. Can you get the carrier bag of winter coats Frankie collected for Veronica House? We’re going to pay Father Niall a visit.”
The silence on his end of the phone went on forever. Then he said in a grim voice, “Does visiting Father Niall have something to do with what you just told me?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”