Chapter 11 - The Plan to Take Elsie
Vittorio read the message three times.
"Take the girl."
Detective Mercer nodded.
"It was sent at 10:17 that morning."
The birthday party had begun at noon.
Helena had arrived at eleven.
"Why would she plan to take Elsie?"
Nora answered.
"Control of the trust."
Mercer agreed.
"If the incompetency plan failed and Marcus stopped cooperating, Elsie herself became leverage."
Vittorio stood.
"Where is Leonard Vale?"
"We don't know."
That answer was unacceptable.
But police were already searching.
Vale's apartment was empty.
His passport was gone.
His car had been abandoned near Newark Airport.
No flight records showed him leaving the country.
Elsie was moved again.
This time to a secure residence owned by a Moretti subsidiary and previously used for protected executives.
Vittorio hated it.
Elsie thought it was an adventure for approximately twenty minutes.
Then she wanted her own bed.
"Why can't we go home?"
"Because some people are making bad choices."
"Grandma?"
"Not only Grandma."
Elsie stared at him.
"Is the bad man coming?"
Vittorio's heart stopped for a second.
"What bad man?"
"The man Grandma talked about."
He crouched.
"What man?"
Elsie looked confused by his urgency.
"The man with the funny eye."
Vittorio glanced at Nora.
"What did Grandma say about him?"
"She said he would drive me."
"When?"
"The day of my party."
Vittorio's skin went cold.
"Did you see him?"
Elsie nodded.
"Where?"
"By the kitchen."
Security footage from the birthday party was reviewed immediately.
At 11:42 a.m., a catering worker entered through the service entrance.
He wore a cap.
Carried two boxes.
Walked past the kitchen.
At 11:47, he exited without the boxes.
Nobody had noticed him.
Owen froze the image.
A scar ran through the man's left eyebrow.
Leonard Vale.
He had been inside the mansion.
Before Helena slapped Elsie.
Before the phone was discovered.
Before the entire conspiracy began collapsing.
A second camera revealed more.
Vale had placed one box inside a service closet near the rear entrance.
Police opened the still-sealed box.
Inside were children's clothes.
A small jacket.
A blanket.
A prepaid phone.
Fake identification carrying Elsie's photograph under another name.
Vittorio stared at the items.
This had not been an impulsive plan.
Helena had intended to make his granddaughter disappear.
Nora's face hardened.
"Now we know why the handbag mattered."
Vittorio looked at her.
"If Helena had secured control of the trust, Elsie stayed."
"And if she failed?"
"Elsie vanished."
The thought was unbearable.
Marcus was informed.
He vomited when detectives showed him the fake identification.
"My mother planned this?"
"Yes."
Marcus looked toward Vittorio.
"Kill me if you want."
Vittorio's expression hardened.
"Stop making everything about your punishment."
Marcus stared.
"Help find him."
That was more useful than guilt.
Marcus thought for almost ten minutes.
Then he said, "Lake house."
"What lake house?"
"Mom owns one through a company."
Nora immediately began searching.
"Where?"
"Upstate. Near Lake George."
"What company?"
Marcus closed his eyes.
"I don't remember."
"Think."
"Something with flowers."
Nora searched Helena's known shell corporations.
Bellmere.
Violet Ridge.
Larkspur Management.
Marcus pointed.
"Larkspur."
Property records revealed Larkspur Management owned a small lake house registered under an attorney's address.
Police reached it before sunset.
Leonard Vale was not there.
But he had been.
Food remained in the refrigerator.
A suitcase sat beside the bed.
And inside a cabinet investigators found ten passports with different names.
Three contained Leonard's photograph.
One contained Helena's.
One was prepared for Elsie.
The escape route had been ready.
On the kitchen table sat a printed ferry reservation from Montreal to Europe scheduled for three days after Elsie's birthday.
Helena had intended to take Elsie out of the country.
Whether Marcus knew or not had ceased to matter.
This was Helena's independent plan.
Then police found something even more disturbing.
A photograph of Vittorio.
Taken through the window of his Manhattan office.
On the back, Leonard had written:
Bell says medication should look natural.
Vittorio handed the photograph to Nora.
"She planned to remove me too."
Nora nodded.
The incompetency declaration had not been Helena's only solution.
If Vittorio refused to surrender control, Dr. Bell could have made his declining health become real.
Helena had designed backup plans for every person in her way.
Sofia.
Marcus.
Vittorio.
Even Elsie.
A family tree converted into a list of obstacles.
That night Helena's attorney requested a meeting.
Helena wanted to negotiate.
She offered information about Leonard Vale in exchange for prosecutors reducing the homicide charge.
Vittorio did not control that decision.
The district attorney agreed to hear her.
Helena provided an address.
An abandoned manufacturing building outside Albany.
Police surrounded it before dawn.
Leonard was inside.
But he had seen them coming.
He barricaded himself in an office and began destroying documents.
After forty minutes, he surrendered.
Nobody was injured.
Among the partially burned records investigators recovered was the complete ledger of Helena's hidden money.
Seventeen million dollars.
Accounts.
Payments.
Names.
Dates.
Every bribe.
Every transfer.
Every crime Sofia had spent months trying to uncover.
Helena had finally surrendered the map to her own destruction.
But when prosecutors asked why she gave Leonard's location so easily, she smiled.
"You think Leonard is the last secret?"
He was not.
One account in the recovered ledger carried Vittorio's signature.
Thirty million dollars.
Transferred eleven years earlier.
Vittorio stared at it.
"I never signed this."
Nora examined the document.
The signature looked perfect.
May you like
If investigators believed it was authentic, Vittorio himself could be accused of participating in Helena's earliest fraud.
For the first time, Helena had found a way to drag him into the conspiracy.
