CHAPTER FOUR
The FBI field office hummed with the low-grade energy of a Monday morning—keyboards clicking, phones ringing in distant cubicles, the smell of burnt coffee drifting from the break room.
Isla sat at her desk with her blazer draped over the back of her chair, scrolling through search results while James hunted down fresh coffee that hadn't been sitting on a burner since dawn.
Bella Ristorante. The name returned thousands of hits, most of them Yelp reviews and foodie blog posts from before the shutdown. Authentic Italian cuisine in the heart of Duluth. Family recipes passed down through generations. A hidden gem on Lake Avenue.
Isla clicked past the glowing reviews, searching for something more substantial.
The salmonella outbreak had made local news, of course—fourteen confirmed cases, three hospitalizations, an investigation that had shuttered the restaurant a week ago.
Marco DiMatteo, the owner, had been quoted expressing his "deep concern for the affected families" while simultaneously insisting that his kitchen maintained the highest standards of cleanliness.
Standard PR damage control. Nothing that explained why a woman had ended up frozen in his walk-in.
She refined her search, adding keywords, filtering by date. The results shifted, older articles surfacing from the digital sediment. And there it was—a headline from eighteen months ago that made her pause.
LOCAL RESTAURANT OWNER SELLS BUSINESS FOLLOWING FAMILY TRAGEDY
Isla clicked through to the article, her coffee growing cold beside her keyboard.
The story unfolded in the dry, matter-of-fact tone of local journalism.
Vincent Carlisle, owner of Bella Ristorante for twelve years, had sold the establishment to Marco DiMatteo following the deaths of his wife Maria and their seven-year-old daughter Lily in a car accident.
A semi-truck had crossed the median on I-35, according to the report.
The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. Maria and Lily had died on impact.
Isla stared at the screen, at the photo embedded in the article.
It showed the Carlisle family at some kind of community event—Vincent with his arm around his wife, their daughter grinning at the camera with a gap-toothed smile.
Maria Carlisle had been beautiful in an understated way, with shoulder-length blonde hair and a warm expression that suggested kindness came naturally to her.
Blonde hair. Shoulder-length.
Isla pulled up the preliminary crime scene photos on her second monitor—the ones Fritz had sent over an hour ago.
Monica Hayes lay in the freezer, her features obscured by frost, but certain details remained visible.
The shape of her face. The length of her hair.
The general impression of a woman in her early thirties.
She opened a new tab and searched for Monica Hayes, finding a LinkedIn profile, a sparse Facebook page, a staff photo from the real estate firm where she'd worked.
The picture showed a professional headshot—Monica smiling against a neutral background, blonde hair styled in soft waves around her face.
Isla placed the images side by side. Maria Carlisle and Monica Hayes.
Different women, different lives, different ages even—Maria had been forty-one when she died, Monica only thirty-four.
But the resemblance was there, impossible to ignore.
The same coloring. The same bone structure. The same general shape to their smiles.
"Rivers."
She looked up to find James approaching with two cups of coffee, his expression caught somewhere between curiosity and concern.
"You've got that look," he said, handing her one of the cups.
"What look?"
"The one that says you found something uncomfortable." He settled into his chair across the aisle, blue eyes taking in her dual monitors. "What did the restaurant turn up?"
Isla turned her monitor so he could see. "DiMatteo bought Bella Ristorante eighteen months ago. Before that, it was owned by a man named Vincent Carlisle. He sold after his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident."
James's brow furrowed as he studied the screen. "Tragedy sale. Not unusual. People can't face the places that remind them of what they've lost."
"No, that's not unusual." Isla pulled up the comparison she'd been making. "But this is."
She watched James's expression shift as he looked at the two photos—Maria Carlisle on the left, Monica Hayes on the right. The resemblance wasn't exact, but it was close enough to raise questions.
"Could be coincidence," he said, but his tone suggested he didn't quite believe it.
"Could be." Isla took a sip of her coffee, found it still too hot, set it aside. "But a woman who looks like the previous owner's dead wife shows up murdered in his former restaurant? That's a lot of coincidence."
"We should talk to DiMatteo first," James said. "Get his side of the sale, find out if he knew the victim, see if there's any connection we're missing."
Isla nodded, already reaching for her blazer.
* * *
Marco DiMatteo lived in a neighborhood that aspired to affluence without quite achieving it—large houses on smaller lots, manicured lawns already brown beneath the February snow, SUVs parked in driveways that could have used a fresh coat of sealant.
His house was a two-story colonial with black shutters and a wreath on the door that had clearly been there since Christmas.
Isla spotted him before they even parked.
He was pacing the front walk, phone pressed to his ear, gesturing so emphatically that his breath fogged the air in agitated bursts.
Even from twenty feet away, she could hear his voice—loud, rapid, switching between English and Italian with the fluency of someone raised between two languages.
"No, no, no, ascolta—”he was saying as they approached. "Non è possibile. Non c'entra niente con me!"
He was a compact man in his early fifties, dark hair shot through with gray, wearing an expensive overcoat that hung open despite the cold.
His face had the florid complexion of someone whose blood pressure had been elevated for too long, and his eyes darted between Isla and James with the wariness of a man who'd been expecting bad news and had just seen it pull into his driveway.
"Ti richiamo," he said into the phone, then ended the call without waiting for a response. "You're FBI. The police said you might come."
"Mr. DiMatteo." Isla showed her badge, James doing the same beside her. "I'm Special Agent Rivers. This is Special Agent Sullivan. We'd like to ask you some questions about your restaurant."
"I didn't do this." The words came out in a rush, tumbling over themselves.
"I want you to know that, right now, before we go any further.
I didn't kill anyone. I didn't put any body in any freezer.
I run a restaurant—I make osso buco and risotto alla Milanese.
I don't—" He broke off, running a hand through his hair.
"Madonna mia, this is a nightmare. An absolute nightmare. "
"Mr. DiMatteo," James said, his voice carrying that steady, grounding quality that Isla had come to rely on. "Let's take a breath. Why don't we go inside and talk through this calmly?"
DiMatteo looked at his house, then back at them, then at the neighbors' windows where curtains had begun to twitch. Something in his expression shifted—embarrassment, maybe, at being seen in the grip of panic.
"Yes. Yes, of course. Come in."
The interior of the house matched the exterior—aspirational, slightly overwrought.
Heavy drapes in burgundy, furniture that looked expensive but uncomfortable, art on the walls that had probably been purchased by the square foot.
DiMatteo led them to a living room where a massive leather sectional faced a fireplace that had never held a real fire.
"Sit, please." He gestured vaguely at the couch, then remained standing himself, too agitated to settle. "Can I get you something? Coffee? Water? I have—"
"We're fine, thank you." Isla took a seat on the edge of the sectional, notebook in hand. "Mr. DiMatteo, when was the last time you were at the restaurant?"
"Two weeks ago. Maybe a little more." He finally sat, perching on the arm of an overstuffed chair like a bird ready to take flight.
"After the health department shut us down, I.
.. I couldn't face it. The calls from the lawyers, the insurance company, the families who got sick—it was too much.
I had my assistant handle the communications, and I stayed away. "
"Tell us about the salmonella outbreak," James said.
DiMatteo's hands flew up in a gesture of frustration.
"That's just it—I don't understand how it happened.
We were clean. We were meticulous. I hired the best cooks, enforced the strictest protocols.
Temperature logs, sanitation schedules, everything by the book.
" He shook his head. "Then they tell me fourteen people got sick from my food? It doesn't make sense."
"But they did shut you down," Isla pointed out.
"Yes, yes, they shut me down. And maybe—" He paused, something shifting in his expression.
"When the health inspector came the first time, my kitchen was perfect.
Spotless. But when they shut us down so suddenly, my staff.
.. they left things a mess. Didn't clean properly, just walked out.
I should have been there to supervise, but I wasn't. That's my fault.
But leaving a dirty kitchen is not the same as—" He couldn't seem to bring himself to say it.
"There was no body when I left. I swear to you on my mother's grave, there was no body. "
Isla studied him—the sweat on his upper lip, the way his knee bounced compulsively, the desperation in his voice. He was scared, that much was obvious. But scared of what? Of being caught, or of being blamed for something he didn't do?