Chapter 32 What Reyes Knows

Chapter 32 What Reyes Knows
Reyes picked up before the second ring.

"I was expecting your call," she said. "Not this soon. But I was expecting it."

"Céleste Arnaud," Gia said.

A pause. Short. The kind that confirmed Reyes already knew the name.

"How much do you know?" Reyes said.

"Enough. She was Ivy's recruit. She has been managing the Elena Russo account for eighteen months on Ivy's instructions. She can place Ivy in the underground network three years before my submission. She can corroborate everything the prosecution needs to establish that Elena Russo predates Caruso's involvement." Gia kept her voice level and fast. "She can also destroy us if Caruso's defence gets to her first."

Reyes was quiet for three seconds. The quiet of someone running calculations.

"She has already been contacted," Reyes said.

Gia went still.

"By whom?"

"Caruso's defence team. Two days ago. They found her through the Elena Russo account records in discovery. They know she was managing the submissions. They do not know yet what she knows about Ivy Vasquez." A pause. "But they will."

Gia looked at Marco across the table. His face was still. He had heard enough.

"She needs to be brought in as a prosecution witness before the defence deposes her," Gia said.

"Yes," Reyes said.

"How long do we have?"

"Forty-eight hours. After that the defence has the right to depose her independently and anything she says becomes available to them before it becomes available to us."

Forty-eight hours.

The subpoena on the kitchen table this morning. The Paris show in four weeks. Céleste in Paris. Forty-eight hours to get a French designer who had been managing a dead woman's account across an international border and into a federal prosecutor's office.

"There is something else," Gia said.

"There always is," Reyes said. Not unkind. The voice of someone who had learned that when Gia Lombardi called there was always something else and it was always significant.

"Ivy was afraid six months before she died. She recruited Céleste as a contingency because she was afraid something was going to happen to her. She did not know what. But she knew enough to build for her own absence." Gia kept her eyes on Marco. "Which means Ivy had information six months before the gala. Something she saw or heard or found that told her the situation was more dangerous than she had understood."

Reyes was very quiet.

"The gala shooting," Gia said. "You always said Ivy Vasquez was collateral damage. Wrong place, wrong time. A guest who was hit by a shot intended for someone else."

"That is the official finding," Reyes said carefully.

"Was it true?"

The silence that followed was not a pause. It was a decision being made on the other end of the line, the kind of decision that had weight and consequence and could not be walked back once it was made.

"No," Reyes said.

One word. Delivered quietly. The way the most important words always were.

Gia did not speak.

"Ivy Vasquez was not collateral damage," Reyes said. "She was the target. We have known this for fourteen months. It was not disclosed because disclosing it would have compromised a separate investigation that was already underway."

Fourteen months.

Gia let that sit for one second.

"The shot that killed Ivy Vasquez was connected to the same network above Caruso that we discussed in our last conversation. The person above Caruso in the financial records. That person had Ivy killed because of what she knew."

A breath. The weight of someone who has been carrying something for fourteen months and has just set part of it down.

"What did she know?" Gia said.

"She had found the financial records herself," Reyes said. "The secondary accounts. The ones connecting Caruso to the network above him. Three years ago, when she was working in the underground fashion network and the Elena Russo platform was being used as part of the money laundering infrastructure. She documented them. She was planning to bring them forward." A breath. "Someone found out. And six months later she was dead."

Gia sat at the kitchen table with the phone in her hand and the morning light coming through the window.

Ivy had not died because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

She had died because she was the most right person in the right place at the right time.

She had died because she was exactly who she was.

Marco was looking at her from across the table. Not speaking. Present. Giving her the full weight of what had just been said without trying to manage it or move past it.

She let herself have three seconds.

Then she looked up.

"The files Ivy left in the Elena Russo account," she said. "The design files. The submission records. The account architecture."

"Yes," Reyes said. She already knew what Gia was going to say.

"She hid the financial records in them," Gia said.

"Yes," Reyes said.

"That is what Caruso was actually looking for when he accepted my Elena Russo submission. Not leverage over the Lombardis. Not an identity connection." She looked at Marco. "He was looking for Ivy's files. He accepted my submission because he thought I was the account holder. He thought I had the records she had built three years ago."

"He has been looking for those records for three years," Reyes said. "They are the only evidence connecting the person above him in the network to the trafficking operation. Without them the person above Caruso walks free regardless of what happens at trial."

"Where are the records now?" Gia said.

"That," Reyes said, "is what we need you to find out."

Gia looked at the portfolio on the corner of the worktable across the room.

At the handwriting in the margins.

You are so much better than you let them see.

She stood up.

"I will call you back," she said.

She ended the call.

Looked at Marco.

"The records are in the Elena Russo files," she said. "Ivy hid them there three years ago. Every design file. Every submission record. Every piece of the account architecture she built."

"Then they are in the studio," he said.

He was already at the door.

She was already moving.