Chapter Twenty-Seven
Taddeo
Taddeo was halfway through a call about Felix Ordo's abandoned car when Isolde entered his office without knocking, and the fact that she had come to him voluntarily was enough to divide his attention in a way almost nothing else could.
He finished listening while she remained just inside the doorway, one hand wrapped around the temporary phone and the other tucked beneath her opposite elbow, her posture controlled but not calm.
She was wearing the dark sweater from breakfast and her own jeans, nothing borrowed from him anymore, and the physical reminder of the distance between them landed before she said a word.
“Keep the airport footage contained,” Taddeo told Marco through the phone, forcing himself back toward the investigation. “I don't want Mauro or Lelio knowing we're looking at Ordo's departure yet, and if Silas asks for the raw camera records, tell him we're still waiting on them.”
Marco said something that made Taddeo's jaw tighten. “No, don't lie badly. Tell him I haven't authorized the release.”
He ended the call and placed the phone facedown on the desk.
Isolde had not moved.
Taddeo looked toward the chair opposite him but did not tell her to sit. “What happened?”
She crossed the room slowly, setting the temporary phone near the edge of his desk without releasing it completely. “Corwin called.”
Taddeo felt every operational instinct sharpen at once, accompanied by the now-familiar effort required not to let those instincts decide the conversation before Isolde did. “Are you all right?”
Her eyes lifted, perhaps surprised that he had asked that first. “Yes. I think so.”
“Was he?”
“Tired. Scared, whether he enjoys admitting it or not.” She pulled the chair out herself and sat, though she remained perched near the edge instead of settling back. “Someone almost found him, but that isn't why I'm here.”
Taddeo clasped his hands loosely in front of him. “All right.”
Isolde studied him long enough to make it clear she was still waiting for a demand that did not come. When he gave her none, she drew a breath and said, “He named Lelio.”
Taddeo went completely still.
“Not conclusively,” she continued. “I need you to hear that part before you decide the rest. Corwin suspected him. Strongly, apparently, but he does not have proof that Lelio built the whole theft structure.”
“What made him suspect Lelio?”
“Access.” Isolde shifted forward and rested her forearms against her knees, tension making her fingers tighten around one another.
“Corwin was checking historical parcel chains before he disappeared, and Lelio knew which files he'd accessed even though Corwin hadn't told the redevelopment people what he was researching yet.”
Taddeo's mind began assembling the pieces before she finished. Lelio's questions at Cesare's dinner. His interest in whether Corwin had left old maps or books with Isolde. The too-helpful information about Mauro. The L. Ardizzi notation in Corwin's archive.
“What else?” he asked.
Isolde's mouth tightened, though this time the reaction was not about privacy. “Corwin found evidence that someone opened the family-contact section of his Bellandi personnel file after he started investigating the money.”
Taddeo's expression hardened.
“My name was accessed.” She watched him carefully. “My museum information too. Corwin says the access went through a permissions group attached to Lelio's administrative people.”
“When?”
“Before Corwin disappeared.”
The answer changed the threat picture immediately.
Taddeo stood and walked toward the secure cabinet, retrieving the museum-attack file while Isolde tracked his movement. “How long before?”
“He didn't give me an exact date.”
“Days? Weeks?”
“He made it sound like weeks.”
Taddeo set the file on the desk and opened the personnel timeline Marco had compiled after the attack. “Did Corwin think Lelio knew he had given you the Harbor Pilot?”
“He doesn't know.” Isolde rose and came around the desk, stopping several feet away rather than moving into the space beside him the way she once would have. “He thinks Lelio knew Corwin was using me as some kind of dead drop without telling me.”
Taddeo's jaw tightened at the phrase.
Isolde saw it. “Don't defend me to my brother when he isn't here. He's finally admitting what he did.”
“I wasn't.”
“You had the face.”
“I have one face.”
“Marco has already disproved that.”
The flicker of familiar humor between them was so brief it almost hurt more than open anger, and Taddeo looked down at the museum timeline before desire could attach itself to the memory of easier conversations.
“Corwin thinks Lelio ordered the museum attack,” Isolde said.
Taddeo looked up.
“Again, he can't prove it.” She folded her arms, holding herself tightly enough that Taddeo had to resist the urge to close the distance.
“But Lelio knew I existed before you took me. He may have known Corwin had left something with me, and then somehow the attackers knew exactly when I would be at the museum.”
Taddeo turned toward the desk phone and stopped before reaching for it. “I'm going to investigate this.”
“I assumed.”
“I won't tell Cesare Corwin named Lelio until we have something independent.”
That surprised her.
Taddeo met her gaze. “Lelio is a capo. If Cesare hears the accusation before I can establish support, every movement around Lelio changes and he may know we are looking.”
“You believe Corwin.”
“I believe the information is plausible enough to test.”
“That's not quite the same.”
“No.”
She nodded slightly. “Good.”
The approval was small, but Taddeo felt it anyway.
He called Marco and asked for the complete vehicle movements from Lelio's known crew during the twelve hours surrounding the museum attack, along with every soldier, associate, driver, and subcontractor connected to Lelio who had either disappeared, missed a normal collection, or unexpectedly changed vehicles in the forty-eight hours afterward.
He also ordered a separate review of the dead attackers' communications and associates using Lelio's crew as a comparison set, but he did not explain why.
Marco's questions sharpened almost immediately. “You have something.”
“I have a direction.”
“Lelio?”
Taddeo glanced toward Isolde.
Her face became wary.
“Yes,” Taddeo said. “Quietly.”
Marco understood the word. “Give me an hour.”
“Thirty minutes for vehicles. Personnel after.”
“You're becoming unreasonable again.”
“I was always unreasonable.”
“That is true.”
The line went dead.
Isolde's mouth curved faintly. “I like Marco more every day.”
“He considers that one of his professional failures.”
“I'll tell him.”
“You won't.”
The small warmth disappeared when Isolde looked toward the museum file on the desk.
Taddeo pushed it toward her. “Sit.”
Her eyes moved to his.
The word had slipped out in its ordinary operational tone.
Taddeo felt the problem immediately. “Sorry.”
Something in her expression changed.
She pulled out the chair beside the desk and sat anyway. “You don't have to apologize every time you use an imperative sentence.”
“I know.”
“I can tell the difference.”
“I am less certain I can.”
The answer made her quiet.
Taddeo opened the museum personnel list and began explaining what they already knew: the dead man in the service corridor had carried false identification and a maintenance badge built from a current museum template but assigned the wrong department color; another attacker died outside the rear service path; the captured man had refused useful questioning and obtained legal representation quickly enough to suggest prior experience.
The stolen vehicle used in the attack had been recovered nine blocks away, wiped badly but not perfectly, and the partial prints inside belonged mostly to known low-level thieves who rented stolen vehicles to whoever paid enough.
Isolde listened without interrupting until he reached the captured attacker. “He's still alive.”
“Yes.”
“Has he talked?”
“No.”
“Have you hurt him?”
Taddeo did not lie. “Not since you asked the first time. We have pressured his attorney through legal and financial channels instead.”
Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “That sounds almost respectable.”
“It isn't.”
“I assumed.”
Marco called twenty-four minutes later.
Taddeo put him on speaker only after looking toward Isolde and receiving a small nod.
“I have three things,” Marco said. Paper moved faintly at his end of the call. “First, one of Lelio's vehicles was logged leaving an Ardizzi-owned social club ninety minutes before the museum power disruption and didn't return until after two in the morning.”
“Which vehicle?”
“Black Escalade. Plate was swapped before it left.”
“Who signed it out?”
“No formal sign-out. Camera catches Federico Lanza moving it from the rear garage.”
Taddeo knew the name. “Lanza works directly for Lelio's crew.”
“Soldier, mostly collections and transportation.”
“Where is he now?”
“Apparently visiting family in Florida since the morning after the museum attack.”
Isolde's attention sharpened.
Taddeo leaned one hand against the desk. “Apparently.”
“No airline ticket under his name,” Marco continued. “His phone went dark before the attack and has not reappeared.”
“Second thing?”
“The stolen museum vehicle passed a traffic camera near East Maddox thirty-seven minutes before the attack. An Escalade matching Lelio's vehicle passed the same intersection four minutes behind it.”
Not proof.
Too much Crownport traffic.
Still a connection.
“And third?”
Marco hesitated slightly. “One of the dead attackers, Elias Torri, worked nightclub security three years ago at a place Lelio's cousin owns.”
Taddeo's face hardened. “How direct?”
“Not direct enough to call him Lelio's man from that alone. Torri was contracted through an outside security company, but the company's manager is married to Federico Lanza's sister.”
Isolde inhaled quietly.
Taddeo looked at her.
Her face had lost color.
“Send everything to the isolated investigation server,” Taddeo told Marco. “Do not put Lelio's name in the report header.”