Chapter 12 - A Woman Named Nora
At six thirty the next morning, I drove past my bakery without stopping.
I parked across the street from the florist, where I could see both entrances. The windows of Five Minutes were dark. The little sign Sophie had painted—EVERYBODY NEEDS A HUG—hung beside the register. For a moment, I felt foolish watching a business I owned as if it were somebody else's crime scene.
Then a woman in a blue raincoat approached the employee entrance.
She was young, maybe thirty, with dark hair tucked under a knitted cap. She held a tote bag and a paper coffee cup. She didn't look over her shoulder, didn't hesitate at the door, didn't do anything that could reasonably be called suspicious.
And I was afraid of her.
I called Lena. She had already contacted the staffing agency and learned that Nora Vale's identity documents had passed its standard screening. A valid identity did not mean someone was harmless, Lena reminded me; an anonymous voicemail did not mean the person was guilty.
“Don't confront her based on this,” Lena said. “Have Tessa open with her, and keep Sophie away today. You can ask the agency for verification and notify the detective.”
“I don't want to be the kind of employer who treats someone like a criminal because a stranger whispered her name.”
“Then don't. Give us time to check.”
I crossed the street and unlocked the door. Nora was sitting on the step, scrolling through her phone.
“Claire?” she asked, standing. “I'm early. I hope that's okay.”
“It's fine. Welcome to Five Minutes.”
Inside, I showed her the aprons, the wash station, the emergency exits, and the staff schedule. She listened carefully, taking notes in a little yellow notebook. When Tessa arrived, Nora introduced herself with a shy smile and immediately offered to carry the flour.
By eight, she had learned the register. By nine, she'd calmed an impatient customer who wanted a pastry we had sold out of. At ten, I began to feel ashamed of my suspicions.
Then I caught her looking at the photograph beside the office door.
It was a picture from opening day: Sophie in yellow, Dominic crouching beside her, me holding the ribbon we'd just cut. Nora's gaze lingered on the child.
“Is that your daughter?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“She's beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Nora opened her mouth, then closed it. “She reminds me of someone.”
“Who?”
“My little cousin.”
She returned to work. I told myself not to invent meaning where there might be none.
The most difficult part of the day was not watching Nora. It was pretending to myself that I had been perfectly fair to her.
At noon, I saw her help an elderly customer carry a tray to a table. She noticed the woman's trembling hand and moved slowly without making a fuss. Later she cleaned a spill in the aisle before anyone told her to do it. She knew which pastries contained nuts and asked Tessa whether we should print the allergen information in larger letters. All of these were the ordinary behaviors of someone who wanted to do a good job.
I had almost allowed an anonymous warning to erase them.
When I mentioned that to Tessa, she folded her arms. “Trust is not the same as taking no precautions,” she said. “But if you start testing every new worker like they're hiding a crime, the whole kitchen will feel it.”
“I know.”
“Then create one rule for everyone. No employee files stored on the register computer. No customer access to the office. No child's school information shared with staff. That's sensible whether Nora is involved or not.”
We spent the next hour improving the shop's routine. I moved personal records to a separate account, created a clear process for visitors, and asked every employee to sign an updated privacy policy. The changes were practical, and Tessa was right: no one had to feel singled out.
In the afternoon, Mr. Alvarez returned with an old cookbook he'd found in his attic. He said the orange-honey bread reminded him of a loaf his grandmother made when he was young. I promised to try it if we could source the peel. He laughed and told me people were always searching for a complicated secret when the answer was usually patience and good butter.
I smiled, even though the remark landed too close to home.
Just before closing, I asked Nora how her first day had felt. She seemed surprised by the question.
“Busy,” she said. “But good. Your customers know each other. They ask about the kids and the school plays. I like that.”
“There's a lot of work behind making a place feel that way.”
“I can tell.”
She looked toward the photograph of Sophie again. I noticed it, and the fear returned, but this time I asked a question instead of building a story in my head.
“Did you know someone who worked at the Russo house?”
Nora's fingers tightened around the timesheet. “I did.”
“Would you like to tell me about them?”
“Maybe,” she whispered. “I'm not sure I'm allowed.”
“Allowed by whom?”
She didn't answer.
I could have demanded one. She was an employee, and I was the owner. It would have been easy to mistake that authority for a right to every part of her life. Instead, I told her she could speak when she was ready, and that the shop's rules applied to everyone, including me.
When she finally asked about Lucia, I understood that she had been deciding whether it was safe to tell me the truth. I did not yet know what the truth was. But I knew the next words would matter.
At lunchtime, Detective Mara Ellis came to the bakery in plain clothes. She had assisted in the investigation into Raffaele and understood why Dominic's world still felt unsettled, even after the arrests. I gave her the voicemail, the envelope, and the hiring records. We spoke in the office with the door shut.
“Has anyone threatened you directly?” she asked.
“No. Somebody said a worker's name was false.”
“Did they provide proof?”
“No.”
“Then we treat it as a lead. We'll check discreetly.”
“Someone mentioned the winter ledger.”
That changed her expression.
“The investigators recovered fragments of a ledger during the financial search,” she said. “Not the complete book. The missing sections might explain payments to people who weren't named in the original case.”
“Is Raffaele still directing anyone?”
“We have no evidence of that. There may be people protecting themselves from what those pages contain.”
Before she left, Ellis looked around the crowded shop.
“You built something good here,” she said. “Keep operating it. Tell your employees the safety procedures that apply to everyone. Don't let an anonymous voice become your manager.”
I appreciated the advice until I remembered Sophie's face in the photograph.
That afternoon, Dominic arrived without a security entourage. He brought a folder containing copies of the trust audit, records he said Lena had requested. He did not ask to see Nora. He stayed on the customer side of the counter, where Sophie had once told him to wait his turn.
“You look tired,” he said.
“I slept badly.”
“Would you like me to take Sophie to the park after school?”
“Grace already has her. I didn't want her here today.”
“Because of the voicemail?”
I nodded.
His jaw tightened. “Is Nora here?”
“Yes, and you are not going to interrogate her.”
“I wasn't planning to.”
I raised an eyebrow.
He exhaled. “I wanted to. That's different.”
For the first time that day, I smiled.
We sat at an empty table. Dominic told me Lucia had once worked with a woman named Marianne Bell at the family accounts office. Marianne had resigned shortly before Raffaele's scheme began to unravel. He had found a letter Lucia wrote to Marianne but never sent.
“What did it say?”
“That she was tired of people calling caution disloyalty. She wanted a record of what she'd found kept somewhere outside the mansion.”
“Did she mention me?”
“No. She mentioned Sophie. And she wrote that children should never become collateral in an adult's argument.”
I looked toward the front windows. There were families standing in line, students with backpacks, a delivery driver eating a muffin while checking his phone. Nothing in the room looked like danger.
“Could Marianne be the woman who called?” I asked.
“Maybe. Lena is looking for her through proper channels.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“I'm learning what that costs when I don't.”
He left before the evening rush. Nora helped Tessa clean the workstations and stayed late to label ingredients without being asked. She appeared conscientious and kind, and my fear made me feel cruel.
When I handed her the timesheet, she hesitated.
“Can I ask you something personal?”
“Depends what it is.”
“Did your daughter ever know Lucia?”
My pulse jumped.
“Why do you ask?”
Nora looked toward the office photograph. “My aunt spoke about a little girl at the Russo house. She said the child liked the smell of orange bread.”
“Who is your aunt?”
Nora's eyes filled suddenly.
“Marianne Bell.”
The shop seemed to tilt.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because she told me not to. She said you'd send me away if you knew.”
I kept my voice steady. “Why would she believe that?”
Nora swallowed. “Because she thinks Dominic Russo had a hand in Lucia's death.”
I felt my grip tighten around the timesheet.
Across the counter, Nora looked younger than she had all morning.
“I don't know what to believe,” she whispered. “But my aunt is missing. She left me a message, and then she stopped answering her phone.”
“Have you reported her missing?”
“Yes. Yesterday.”
Nora reached into her bag. I stiffened, but she took out only a photograph. It showed Marianne and Lucia standing beside a stainless-steel counter in a kitchen I recognized: the old Russo mansion.
Behind them, on the wall, hung a calendar. Someone had circled December seventeenth in red.
“That was the day before Lucia died,” Nora said.
May you like
I stared at the photograph.
The date had been circled before anything happened.
