He Spoke Her Language, So I Said Goodbye novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Shelf

The first check from Dante came on Tuesday, in a cream envelope with a fresh stamp.

It was for five hundred dollars.

On the memo line, he'd written: with love.

I took a photo of it, and then I took a photo of the bank teller's face when she said it had bounced.

By two o'clock I was standing in the kitchen of Ferraro's with the check in my hand.

"He wrote it on the restaurant account," Luca said. He was breaking down a case of chickens at the steel table, with his sleeves pushed up past his elbows. "The restaurant account has been under zero since August."

"He said he'd pay me back in front of forty people."

"He said a lot of things in front of forty people."

He rinsed his knife and dried it on a towel.

"Can you find out where the rest went?" I asked. "Not the lease. The rest. I didn't give him sixty thousand dollars to put a roof over her head. I gave it to him for a stove."

"I can ask the landlord for the building's ledger. I can pull my own guarantor statements. Give me a few days."

"I'll wait," I said, and I meant I wouldn't, and he seemed to understand that.

He moved around the table to the sink.

I moved to the other side to give him room, and I stepped back against the wall of pots.

Above my head a long steel shelf hung from two brackets.

I heard a small sharp sound, metal giving way.

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