Chapter 2 Obsessed?
Tanner’s POV
Evelyn Brooks was still on the television when I got home.
I stopped inside the library and watched her answer a reporter’s question about the wedding she had just finished.
Same black dress. Same composed smile. Same voice I’d first heard weeks ago when I happened to look up during a meeting and saw her being interviewed on another screen.
Aldo was sitting behind my desk.
I looked at him.
He looked back at me.
“You’re in my chair.”
“You weren’t here.”
“Move.”
He got up, taking his drink with him.
I picked up the remote and shut off the television.
Aldo watched me do it.
“You know you could’ve stayed home and watched her from here.”
“I wasn’t watching her.”
“No?”
“No.”
He nodded toward the dark screen. “That’s convenient.”
I ignored him and walked to the bar.
Aldo had known me too long to know when to shut up and apparently not long enough to care.
He picked up a folder from my desk and held it out.
“Since you weren’t watching her.”
I took it.
EVELYN BROOKS was printed across the tab.
I gave him a look.
“You asked me to find out who she was.”
“Six weeks ago.”
“And you keep asking questions.”
I opened the file.
There were photographs mixed in with the usual background information.
Evelyn outside her office.
Evelyn getting coffee.
Evelyn walking into Mount Sinai.
I stopped on that one.
“How often is she there?”
“Her mother?”
“Yes.”
“Couple times a week. More lately.”
I turned the page.
Margaret Brooks. Sixty-one.
The next several pages were medical records.
“What is this?”
“You asked why Brooks spends so much time at the hospital.”
“I didn’t ask for her mother’s entire medical history.”
“No. You just wanted to know where Evelyn goes, what she does, who she sees and why she disappears into a hospital three nights a week.”
I looked up.
Aldo lifted his glass.
“Very different.”
I went back to the file.
Her mother had been sick for years.
The doctors had plenty of findings and no real answer. Fevers. Blood abnormalities. Inflammation. Periods where one organ looked like it was failing before the numbers shifted again.
Specialists had come and gone.
Nothing had fixed it.
The bills were easier to understand.
Evelyn had been paying them.
“She’s selling the apartment,” I said.
“Her mother’s place in Queens.”
“Why?”
“Take a guess.”
I shut the file.
I already knew Evelyn made good money. Better than most people in her profession.
Apparently, it still wasn’t enough.
Aldo sat on the edge of my desk.
“So?”
“So what?”
“You stood across the street from her for twenty minutes.”
“I was there for nine.”
He stared at me.
I looked at him.
“Nine?”
“Approximately.”
“That correction did not help you.”
I poured myself a drink.
I had first seen Evelyn six weeks ago during a meeting at Vescari Capital.
One of the televisions had been turned to a local news segment. I wasn’t paying attention until I heard her laugh.
I looked up.
She had been standing in a ballroom while a reporter asked her what made a perfect wedding.
“Nothing,” Evelyn had said.
The reporter laughed like she thought Evelyn was joking.
Evelyn wasn’t.
“Something always goes wrong. My job is making sure the couple never knows what it was.”
I’d watched the rest of the interview.
The next day, I asked Aldo her name.
That should have been the end of it.
It wasn’t.
I learned where her office was. What events she was planning. Which charities hired her. Which hotels she used most often.
Then I started seeing her myself.
Never close.
Until tonight.
Aldo watched me take a drink.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Something happened.”
“I smelled her.”
His expression changed.
“What about her?”
I didn’t answer.
I wasn’t sure I had one.
There had been hundreds of people outside that hotel. Traffic. Food. perfume. Rain on pavement.
I still smelled Evelyn before I found her in the crowd.
It wasn’t hunger.
I knew hunger.
Whatever I picked up from her was different.
Familiar enough to bother me.
I had smelled something like it before, but the memory was buried too far back to put a name to it.
Aldo waited.
“Well?”
“I don’t know.”
He frowned. “You don’t know?”
“No.”
That bothered him.
It bothered me more.
The library door opened before he could ask anything else.
Costanza walked in wearing pajamas and carrying three wedding magazines under one arm.
“I fired Lillian.”
Aldo looked at me.
I looked at Costanza.
“Who?”
“My wedding planner.”
“You fired another one?”
“She told me six hundred candles were excessive.”
“They are.”
“She said battery-operated candles would look the same.”
“They would.”
Costanza stared at me.
I took another drink.
“What?”
“You have no taste.”
“You asked for my opinion.”
“No, I came in here to tell you I fired her.”
“Then why are we discussing candles?”
“Because you’re annoying.”
Aldo smiled into his glass.
Costanza dropped the magazines on the coffee table and sat down.
“I need somebody else.”
“Hire somebody else.”
“Very helpful.”
“I try.”
“The wedding is in eleven weeks.”
“I’m aware.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“When is it?”
I looked at her.
She smiled.
“That’s what I thought.”
“I know the month.”
“Impressive.”
Aldo laughed.
Costanza pointed at him. “Stay out of it.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You don’t need to.”
She turned back to me.
“I need somebody who can handle the guest list, the security rules, the property, the second ceremony and everything else without having a breakdown.”
“Evelyn Brooks.”
The room went quiet.
Not for long.
Costanza leaned forward.
“Who?”
“Evelyn Brooks.”
“I heard you. Why do you know a wedding planner?”
I picked up my glass again.
“She’s good.”
Costanza looked at Aldo.
He looked away.
That was enough.
Her eyes came back to me.
“Oh, this is interesting.”
“It isn’t.”
“You know her name.”
“So do half the people in Manhattan.”
“I don’t.”
“You just fired your fourth planner. That may explain part of the problem.”
She ignored that.
“How do you know her?”
“I’ve seen her work.”
“At a wedding?”
“No.”
“Then where?”
“Television.”
Costanza blinked.
Aldo turned his face toward the window.
I could see his shoulders moving.
“If you laugh,” I said, “leave.”
“I’m not laughing.”
Costanza was.
“You watched a wedding planner on television?”
“She was being interviewed.”
“And you remembered her name.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the name of the man who interviewed you last week about the Vescari merger?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
I set my glass down.
“Do you want a planner or not?”
“I do.”
“Then call her office.”
Costanza’s smile widened.
“You really want me to hire her.”
“I want you to stop firing people.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“Costanza.”
“Fine. I’ll call her.”
“Have the family office do it.”
She paused.
“Why?”
“She gets hundreds of inquiries. If it comes from Vescari, she’ll answer.”
“And you know that because?”
“Because that’s how business works.”
Costanza stared at me for another few seconds.
“You like her.”
“I don’t know her.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
“It was close enough.”
Aldo finally laughed.
I pointed at the door.
“Out.”
He finished his drink first.
Costanza stood and kissed my cheek.
“I’ll have someone contact her in the morning.”
“Good.”
She reached the door, then looked back.
“What does she look like?”
“You have a phone.”
That made her laugh again.
Then she left.
Aldo stayed where he was.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
“I was just wondering how far you’re planning to take this.”
“There is no this.”
“You found a woman interesting, followed her around Manhattan and handed her to your sister as a wedding planner.”
“I didn’t hand anyone to anyone.”
“Right.”
I picked up Evelyn’s file again.
Aldo’s attention dropped to the medical pages.
“Don’t use the mother.”
I looked up.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I’m not threatening a sick woman.”
“I know.”
“Then what are we talking about?”
“I’m talking about you deciding Evelyn Brooks needs a reason to take Costanza’s wedding and figuring out exactly which reason she can’t afford to turn down.”
I closed the folder.
“She’ll be paid for the job.”
“Very well.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
Aldo stood.
“Good.”
He left before I could answer.
I stayed in the library.
Evelyn’s file was still on the desk.
I opened it again, this time to the family section.
Brooks came from her father.
Her mother had been Margaret Elwood.
Margaret’s mother was Anna Elwood.
Anna’s mother had been Elisabetta Vale.
I stopped.
Vale.
I read the name again.
Then the line beneath it.
Elisabetta’s mother had been born in northern Italy.
Valeri.
I got up.
There was a cabinet behind my desk that I rarely opened anymore. Most of what sat inside it had no use now. Records from families that no longer existed. Old agreements. Property claims. Names that had disappeared generations ago.
I found the ledger I wanted and carried it to the desk.
The binding cracked when I opened it.
I turned through several pages before I found the name.
Valeri.
I sat back.
The House of Valeri had been gone for more than five hundred years.
I knew that much without the ledger.
Everyone knew it then.
There were no surviving children. No recognized branches. No one left to carry the bloodline forward.
I looked at Evelyn’s family history again.
Valeri could have become Vale.
Or it could be coincidence.
Families changed names all the time.
I would have dismissed it if I hadn’t stood across the street from her tonight.
If I hadn’t smelled her.
I picked up my phone and called Aldo.
He answered after the third ring.
“What?”
“I need the original records on Evelyn’s maternal family.”
A pause.
“How far back?”
“As far as you can get.”
“You found something.”
“I found a name.”
“What name?”
I looked at the ledger.
“Valeri.”
Aldo went quiet.
That told me he remembered it too.
“Tancredi.”
“Don’t start.”
“They’re dead.”
“I’m aware.”
“All of them.”
“I remember.”
Another pause.
Then Aldo asked, “What do you think she is?”
I looked at Evelyn’s photograph lying beside the ledger.
“I don’t know.”
For once, that was the truth.
Tomorrow, my sister’s office would call Evelyn Brooks and offer her more money than most wedding planners made in a year.
And if she accepted, she would walk straight into my home.
That part had been my idea.
I was beginning to wonder if it had been a good one.
