Chapter 5 Luca
Chapter five
Luca
“Dominic,” I said, “your watch has stopped. I don’t hear it ticking.”
He drew it from his waistcoat pocket, clicking the case open in a motion I’d watched on a thousand mornings. He set it on the table beside his coffee mug and looked down.
The hands read 8:14.
I watched him hesitate. Then Dominic wound the stem. Once. Twice.
“It’s fully wound.”
Thiago had been finishing his coffee at the counter. He didn’t sit for breakfast. He approached the table and looked at the watch without touching it.
“Problem?”
Dominic turned the watch toward him.
8:14.
“Does that mean something?”
“That was the downbeat of the final chorus,” Dominic said.
“2006?”
“Yes.”
“May I?” Thiago asked as he reached for the watch. Dominic nodded.
“Who handled it yesterday?”
Dominic shook his head. “Only me.”
I told them I’d cleared his study desk the previous evening before dinner. Stacked correspondence, moved a score he’d left open overnight, and straightened the surface. The watch had been closed and sitting in its place, to the right of his annotated scores, when I left the room.
Thiago turned the case in both hands, tilting it toward the window light. He examined the hinge and the clasp while running his thumb along the back. He handed it back to Dominic without comment.
“Nothing?” I asked.
“No scratches or tool marks.”
Dominic’s phone rang. It was a call from the orchestra manager. He retreated to the salon while I remained in the kitchen with Thiago.
I tried to wind the watch. I managed to turn the mechanism a quarter turn. It ticked once on the table, then stopped again.
Neither of us moved for a moment. Then Thiago began checking the room. He’d done it a dozen times a day since he arrived. Window latches. The doorframe. The arrangement of appliances on the counter.
There was nothing disturbed or missing. The room looked exactly as I’d left it the evening before.
He would have to check the study. Someone had entered the house, found the watch on the study desk, and damaged the watch’s mechanism enough that it froze on a chosen hour and minute, even though fully wound. Nothing else. No visible damage or signs of a search.
“They took nothing,” I said. “I’ve already been in the study once this morning, and I would have noticed.”
“They didn’t come here to take anything.” Thiago straightened, then leaned against the doorframe. “The sheet music rewrote the concert, and then the baton disrupted his way of conducting it. This is different.”
I waited.
“The first two were interference. This is a statement about knowledge.” He sat across from me at the table. “They know that timestamp. They know where his watch lives and what it means to him, and they know his habits well enough to walk in and out without leaving a trace.”
I’d thought about the gunshot, “Saints,” and the baton before I climbed out of bed. It all added up to a warning, but of what?
“This isn’t rage,” I said.
Thiago looked at me.
“Rage breaks things. This is patient.” I glanced at the watch. “They’ve been planning this for a long time.”
Thiago touched the watch face.
“You’re right. Whoever did this didn’t rush.” He glanced at me. “What’s in your pocket?”
I’d been turning a pouch between my fingers. I drew it out. Small, worn linen, tied with a cord that had been retied more than once.
“Gris-gris,” I said. “My grandmother’s.”
“For protection?”
“For remembrance.”
He looked at it for a moment. “You’ve had it in your pocket since yesterday.”
He’d noticed. “I usually keep it in my desk.”
He didn’t ask why I’d moved it.
***
By mid-afternoon Dominic had shut himself in the study with the anniversary program notes. The closed door meant he was unavailable. I stood at the stove, stirring shrimp and grits with one hand while sipping white wine with the other.
It wasn’t a conscious decision. I reached for the shrimp in the refrigerator and measured out the stone-ground grits. By the time I was chopping andouille, I’d committed to the meal.
Thiago appeared with his tablet in hand and stopped in the doorway.
“That smells like garlic,” he said.
“Shrimp and grits. You’ll eat it.”
“I wasn’t objecting.”
He set the tablet on the far end of the counter and leaned against the wall. “What’s in it?”
“Stone-ground grits. Shrimp from the market yesterday. Andouille, peppers, garlic, and butter. Green onions at the end.”
“No cream?”
“Some people use cream. I don’t.”
“Why not?”
Our usual visitors never asked about the ingredients. They simply enjoyed what I made. “Because everything worth eating in this city already has enough going on. Cream buries it.”
Thiago was quiet for a moment. “My mother would agree with that.”
“What does she cook?”
“Arroz con gandules. Pernil when it’s worth the time. She trusts nothing that comes out of a can.”
“Smart woman.”
I deglazed the pan, and the savory aromas swirled through the kitchen. Thiago sat at the table, leaning back in his chair, nose slightly lifted to the air.
We ate with the courtyard doors open. Dominic emerged from the study, drawn by the scent of garlic, and ate half a bowl standing at the counter. He joined us at the table and pronounced my cooking acceptable.
When he finished his bowl, Dominic looked at both of us. “Cards?”
“In the courtyard?” I asked.
“Obviously.”
I found the deck in the console table drawer where it lived alongside a bookmark Dominic had been using since 2019. Thiago carried his dishes to the sink and followed us into the courtyard.
The evening had cooled to an almost bearable temperature. The lemon trees cast long shadows across the flagstones. I wiped the iron table with a dish towel while Dominic settled into a chair and accepted the Armagnac I poured for him.
Thiago took the chair facing the gate.
He declined the wine I offered and asked about iced tea. It was always available in the fridge.
We played gin rummy. Dominic dealt after a shuffling performance that made Thiago smile.
Within three hands, it became clear Dominic was enjoying the game. Not competitively. Socially. He would sigh over a perfectly good hand or raise an eyebrow at nothing at all, leaving us to wonder whether it meant something.
Dominic won.
“You’re very gracious,” he told Thiago.
The fountain ran. Somewhere on the avenue a streetcar passed, its bell a single, clean note through the oak canopy. Thiago tracked the groundskeeper crossing the courtyard’s far side to adjust the irrigation valves.
I watched. Thiago was good at his job. He didn’t need to be seen as protecting something, and his understated approach registered as care rather than calculation.
Still, he saw the world in the context of a series of access points. The problem was we didn’t run the house by controlling who entered when and where. We made our decisions based on something more fragile: relationships and loyalties built year over year.
Thiago’s framework had no category for that kind of trust. He wasn’t wrong. His work was incomplete.
Dominic saw the tension on my face. It was the same attention to detail he used to hear a single flagging instrument in the third row of a full orchestra.
He raised his glass of Armagnac, swirled it, and said mildly: “Luca believes this house runs on loyalty. Mr. Reyes, you believe it should operate with verification.”
Thiago didn’t look up from his hand. “Loyalty and verification often overlap.”
“Only when one is fortunate,” Dominic said, and drew a card.
The courtyard gate clicked, a metallic note from the latch. I was immediately on my feet. Then I saw a silhouette through the ironwork and stepped forward to open it.
Father Adrien Toussaint entered with a thin folder under one arm. He was in his sixties, tall and slim, with his clerical collar bright white against his black shirt.
He looked at me first, and then at Thiago and the table.
“I heard there was some difficulty,” he said.
“Some,” I agreed. “Join us.”
Dominic rose, and they greeted each other with a warm hug. Father Toussaint took a chair, declined Armagnac, and accepted water.
He settled into a chair and looked around the courtyard with quiet pleasure.
“Those lemons,” he said. “I remember when they were saplings in buckets.”
“You told Luca where to buy them,” Dominic said.
Father Toussaint smiled at me. “That nursery in Gentilly. The owner swore they were descendants of trees his grandfather smuggled back from Sicily.”
“Everything in this city is descended from something smuggled,” Dominic said.
Father Toussaint laughed softly. “True enough.”
He looked toward the fountain, watching it run.
Thiago remained at the table, attentive as always. At the first natural pause, he asked, “When was the last time you visited the house?”
He used a measured, professional tone.
Father Toussaint answered, “Last Friday.” He smiled slightly. “Around four. Dominic and I went through the program notes.”
Thiago nodded and made a notation on his tablet.
“When the cathedral roof was being repaired after Katrina,” Father Toussaint said, “we had a mason who insisted the saints were the ones keeping the scaffolding steady. Claimed he’d seen Saint Joseph holding a brace during a thunderstorm.”
“And did you correct him?” Dominic asked mildly.
“Of course not. The work finished on schedule.”
Dominic smiled. “Yours is a pragmatic theology.”
Adrien opened the folder on his knee. “It will help in getting this concert staged.”
Father Toussaint stayed another twenty minutes. When he left, he hugged Dominic again and then touched my arm briefly. I latched the gate behind him.
The salon light was still on. I’d left it burning when we came outside.
“He’s been coming here for at least fifteen years,” I said.
“A frequent guest.”
“He’s a close friend of Dominic’s, not a contact.”
“I understand the distinction.”
“Then you understand why asking him to account for himself feels like—“
“I asked when he last visited.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s asking for a timeline, not an interrogation.”
“It felt like both.”
Thiago leaned forward. Without pausing or looking at my glass first, he reached across the table and refilled my wine.
He kept talking. “Luca, everyone with access to this house is an open question until we gather enough information to see the complete picture. That goes for people Dominic trusts. Especially for them.”
“You’re looking for enemies in the faces of loyal friends.”
“I’m building a timeline.”
I glanced at the gate, latched and locked.
“This house has stayed open through plenty of events that would have closed other places. It wasn’t out of laziness. It was a conscious decision.”
“I know.” He held my gaze. “And the person who set that watch knew it too. They didn’t come in through a blind spot. They came in because this house encourages visitors.”
He wasn’t wrong. I couldn’t argue with his deduction. The house’s openness was part of its character, but we’d never faced such violations in the past.
Thiago rose and went to the kitchen.
Dominic remained at the table with me.
He’d watched our exchange and didn’t intervene. He sat with his Armagnac and waited it out. Dominic gathered the cards and squared the deck.
He took his glass inside, settled it in the sink, and turned toward the stairs.
Thiago joined me, but neither of us spoke.
The fountain ran. The gate held its latch. I watched as he turned his head sideways, the line of his jaw silhouetted in the twilight. He sat with his forearms on the table, hands loose.
“The heat breaks around October,” I said.
He pushed back from the table. “I need to check the latches before I turn in.”
“They’re fine,” I said. “I checked them.”
“I know you did.”
He was already standing. Then he stopped, not quite looking at me, his hand resting on the back of the chair.
“My mother used to sit outside after everyone went to bed. Fire escape, not a courtyard.” A pause. “Same idea.”
I wasn’t sure he meant to say it. His expression suggested he wasn’t entirely sure either.
“She’s not wrong,” I said.
“No. She rarely is.”
He left the table.
As I looked across the courtyard, I saw the salon light was no longer on. I’d left it burning. I was certain of it. I looked through the French doors at the dark interior and thought about whether I’d gone back inside at any point during the evening.
I hadn’t.
“Thiago.”
He reappeared in the doorway before I had finished saying his name.
“The salon light,” I said.
He was already moving past me.
I followed him inside. He didn’t reach for a light switch. He stood in the salon’s doorway with his phone’s flashlight low and swept it across the room. The Steinway, concert posters, and the front door to the avenue.
“How long were we outside?” he asked.
“Three hours. Maybe a little more.”
He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was level. “They were here while we were playing cards.”