Chapter 8 - THE SECOND BOTTLE
The first real break came from a person nobody had considered important.
His name was André Lemaire, a junior wine steward who had worked at Le
Triomphe for six months. He had not been scheduled for the private
dinner, but his name appeared on the access log because he had swapped
shifts with a colleague at the last minute. The restaurant manager had
forgotten to mention it. André had left the building before the police
arrived and had not answered calls from the restaurant since.
Detective Park found him at a small apartment in Jersey City, where he
had been staying with his cousin. He agreed to meet at a police station
with a lawyer present.
André was twenty-four, thin, and so nervous he kept rubbing his palms
against his trousers. He said he had been asked to carry a sealed case
from the loading area to the service station. The person who gave it to
him told him it contained replacement glassware for a VIP table. He had
not opened it.
“Who asked you?” Park said.
“A man who said he was with the supplier.”
“Can you identify him?”
“I don’t know his name. He showed me a badge.”
“Did you check it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
André’s face reddened. “Because I needed the shift. Because I was told
it was a last-minute delivery. Because the manager was yelling about the
schedule. I thought it was glass.”
“What happened to the case?”
“I left it under the station. Someone else took it.”
“Who?”
“I saw a woman in a dark coat pick it up. She had a silver ring with a
black stone. I remember because it caught the light.”
Park asked him to describe the woman. André could not provide a clear
face, but he remembered her voice. She had spoken Italian with a
regional accent he associated with Naples. He had heard her say, “Not
that bottle. The other one.”
The words matched the warning written on the note found in the trust
file: Do not trust the person who brings the wine.
André also remembered something else. When he carried the case through
the corridor, he had seen the sommelier speaking with Rafe D’Amico. The
two men were arguing quietly. André had heard Rafe say, “You were told
not to touch the glass.”
The sentence could have meant several things. It could have been a
warning about contamination, or a routine instruction, or evidence that
Rafe knew more than he had admitted. Park did not treat it as a
confession. She asked André to repeat it for the record, then requested
the restaurant’s complete staff roster and the security team’s
communications.
When Dominic heard the account, he went very still.
“Rafe has a ring like that,” he said.
Nora looked up. “A black stone?”
“He wears his father’s signet ring. Dark onyx. Silver setting.”
“Could the woman have taken it from him?” I asked.
“Possibly.”
“Or she could have been someone else wearing a similar ring.”
Dominic nodded. “We don’t assume.”
Park arranged a second interview with Rafe. He arrived with his attorney
and denied knowing André. He said he had spoken to Étienne about the
table because Dominic had asked him to check the security layout. He
denied telling the sommelier not to touch the glass.
“Do you own a silver ring with a black stone?” Park asked.
Rafe held out his hand. The ring was there.
“Have you ever lent it to anyone?”
“No.”
“Was anyone wearing it on the night of the dinner?”
“No.”
“Can you account for your location during the ninety-two-second camera
gap?”
“I was in the corridor near the private room.”
“Who saw you?”
“The floor manager.”
The floor manager said he had not seen Rafe in that corridor. He
remembered seeing him near the elevators, then later near the host
stand. The discrepancy did not prove Rafe had disabled the camera, but
it weakened his account.
Dominic refused to confront him privately. “If he’s involved, I won’t
give him a chance to destroy evidence,” he said. “If he’s innocent, he
deserves a proper process.”
That afternoon, the lab confirmed that the wine sample had been
deliberately contaminated with an unidentified substance capable of
causing a severe medical emergency. The investigators would not release
details while the analysis continued. The sample from Dominic’s glass
contained a trace of the same substance. The other glasses did not.
The finding changed the case from a suspected attempt to a confirmed
poisoning.
Dominic read the report in silence. Then he asked whether the medical
team had found any signs that he had been exposed. They had not. He had
not drunk from the altered glass. He had noticed the difference in the
stem and set it aside.
He did not look triumphant. He looked sick.
“If I had taken one sip,” he said, “we might be discussing this in the
past tense.”
I had no comforting answer.
Park placed the lab report in a sealed folder. “We still need to
identify who altered the bottle and how it reached the table. The fact
that the other glasses were clean suggests the plan targeted one place
setting, not the whole table.”
“Mine,” Dominic said.
“Yes.”
“And the person who arranged the document wanted me either dead or
declared incapable.”
“Yes.”
He stood and walked to the window, then stopped when his hip—old from an
earlier injury—stiffened. For the first time, I noticed that he had been
holding himself rigid since the dinner. He had not eaten much, and he
had not slept.
“Sit down,” I told him.
He turned, surprised.
“You’re pale. You’re not helping anyone by pretending you aren’t
affected.”
Nora glanced at him, but did not intervene. Dominic sat.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t make it a habit.”
A faint smile touched his face. It disappeared quickly.
Park received another call. A courier had delivered a package to the
police station containing a second wine bottle, still sealed, with a
label from the same reserve batch. The package had no return address.
Inside was a note:
You found the first one. Find out who ordered the second.
The bottle had not been tampered with, according to the initial
inspection, but the delivery itself was a threat. Someone wanted the
police to know they could reach into the investigation whenever they
chose.
Park ordered the package secured and began tracing the courier. Dominic
asked whether the bottle should be destroyed.
“No,” Park said. “It is evidence. We don’t destroy evidence because it
frightens us.”
The note’s paper stock matched the stationery used by Bellini
Hospitality Supply. That was not conclusive; the company had sold office
supplies to several clients. But the invoice records showed that the
paper had been purchased through an account authorized by Celeste’s
office.
Again, the same name appeared near the same facts.
That night, I went to the temporary apartment and called my mother. She
sounded tired but calmer. Noah had gone to class. My aunt had made soup.
The black SUV had not returned.
“I want you to come home,” my mother said.
“I want that too.”
“Then come home.”
“I can’t yet. The police need my statement, and the person who sent the
photograph may still be watching us.”
She was quiet for a long time. “You are not responsible for solving
their family’s problems, Mara.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I thought about the altered translation, the glass, the missing camera
footage, and the person who had sent a threat to my home.
“No,” I admitted. “Not all the way.”
After we hung up, I sat with the second bottle’s photograph on the
screen. Someone had chosen a symbol that looked elegant and harmless: a
sealed bottle, a familiar label, a private dinner. The danger was hidden
in the ritual.
The person who had planned it believed that people would see what they
expected to see.
They had been wrong about me once.
I was not going to let them make the same mistake twice.
Before leaving the board meeting, I asked Park whether the threat about
the next bottle would be included in the public record.
“Eventually, if it becomes part of a filing,” she said. “For now, we
need to protect the investigation.”
“I don’t want the message to become a rumor that I exaggerated.”
“Your original recording is preserved. The sender’s identity is still
unknown. That’s the fact.”
I nodded. The discipline was frustrating, but it protected me from
becoming the story’s most convenient narrator. If I wanted the truth to
survive, I had to accept that some questions would remain unanswered for
a while.
In the car, Nora handed me a copy of the board’s decision. The transfer
was frozen. The independent administrator had authority to preserve the
trust files and review the company’s procedures. Celeste could no longer
access the disputed documents without oversight. The board had also
agreed that no employee would be disciplined for cooperating with the
investigation.
“That last part matters,” I said.
“It should have been obvious from the beginning,” Nora replied.
“Obvious isn’t the same as automatic.”
She gave a small smile. “You’re going to make everyone hate that
sentence.”
“Then maybe they’ll remember it.”
When I reached the temporary apartment, I called my mother and told her
the board had not approved the transfer. She exhaled as though she had
been holding her breath for days.
“Does that mean it’s over?” she asked.
“No. It means one bad decision didn’t become permanent.”
“That’s something.”
“It is.”
I looked at the message on my phone again. The next bottle will not be
wine. I saved it to the evidence folder and did not let myself imagine
May you like
every possible meaning. The police would investigate it. I would keep my
family informed. The rest would have to wait.
