Page 48 of Return to Whitmore
Charlotte knew Francesca was referencing her own father, who still lived next door and wasn’t related to Nina at all. Not by blood.
“The private investigator, or gardener, or whatever he is, is coming in twenty minutes,” Francesca said. “He doesn’t knowyou will be here, but I’m sure he will be very pleased to pick your brains.”
Charlotte took a breath. She was fearful. How much did she want to tell her mother about what she knew? How much of it was relevant any longer?
“Mom, Jack and I lived together in the 2000s,” Charlotte blurted.
Francesca shot Charlotte a look that terrified her.
“He’s alive,” Charlotte whispered.
At least, he was until two months ago, which was the last time Addison saw him,she didn’t say. She didn’t want to complicate things.
Francesca’s face crumpled with alarm, with sorrow, with worry. She hid behind her hands and sobbed openly, her shoulders shaking. “My baby! My Jack!” she cried. “Why did he do this to us? Why did he hide himself away?”
“We don’t really know,” Charlotte admitted. It felt pathetic that in all the years she’d spent with him, she hadn’t managed to figure out what he’d been up to.
“But I’m worried,” Charlotte said. “Tio Angelo was running a drug ring out of the White Oak Lodge, and Jack was tied up in it.”
“So was my boyfriend, Amos,” Nina said. “He’s told me bits and pieces of what went on.”
Francesca’s face went pale. She looked like she couldn’t speak.
“Jack thinks something bad went down,” Charlotte said. “Apparently, that night, somebody told him to run. After that, it was said that he was dead along with Tio Angelo and Dad.” At the mention of her father, Charlotte’s chest tightened with pain. “Jack wanted to track down Tio Angelo. He was sure that Tio Angelo ruined our family, that it was his fault that everything happened. But as far as I know, Jack could never find him.”
Francesca gripped Charlotte’s hand so hard that Charlotte’s fingers cracked.
“I don’t understand,” Francesca said in both Italian and English.
“I’m worried that Tio Angelo sent this private investigator to you to dig around,” Charlotte said. “Maybe he thinks you know where Jack is. Perhaps he thinks you’d hide your son at all costs.”
“I would hide my son at all costs,” Francesca said. “I’d do anything for him.”
“We need to be strategic. Maybe we can figure out where this private investigator came from. Maybe we can offer him money to go the other way?” Charlotte suggested, thinking of her grandfather’s resources, her mother’s money. It was no Whitmore treasure, but it might get them somewhere.
Just then, there was a knock from inside the house. Francesca bristled and got to her feet.
“I told him that if he wants to come back, he has to knock and enter through the house,” she said regally. “I won’t have some fake gardener making a mockery of my flowers.” She strolled through the back door and entered. Just before she disappeared, she draped her head back and said, “Perhaps you two could hide yourselves away and listen? He doesn’t expect anyone else, for now.”
And then, she added, “Nina, I’m so happy you’re here.”
A sob escaped Nina’s throat.
Charlotte and Nina hurried away from the veranda and hid behind the thatched fence. Charlotte wrapped herself in a ball and leaned against a nearby tree, her heart pounding. Nina looked nervous and grim.
The first thing she heard was a man’s American-accented English. “Whose car is out front?”
They were coming through the back door and sitting around the veranda table. Francesca set down something that sounded like a pitcher of water or lemonade.
Francesca hadn’t mentioned that the private investigator was American. Charlotte cursed herself for having forgotten to hide the car down the block.
“That’s my daughter’s car,” Francesca said in English. “She’s here for the weekend.”
It was a good strategy, as today was Friday. They’d left Boston on a Wednesday and arrived in Italy on a Thursday. Time was passing too quickly. Charlotte tried to calm herself down.
“Which daughter?” the investigator asked.
“Shouldn’t you know that? Since you’re a investigator,” Francesca said, not even vaguely insulting him. Such was Francesca’s way.
