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Vincente Costa. The man who would drag me to the attic without a consoling word, after my father beat me. I was a little boy, terrified of the attic, but he never once showed me any kindness. I hope he’s rotting in hell.
“Yeah. I remember him.”
“He paid off his mortgage two days after your mother went missing, and his brother Afonso’s house was paid off eight days later.”
What? Why didn’t we know about this? “How do you know?”
“Because all the records are now online.”
Fuck. She’s right.
For centuries, real estate transactions in Porto and the Douro Valley were subject to arcane laws because property history was often hard to trace in a way that satisfied both buyers and sellers. Sales took forever to be completed, if they were able to be completed at all. There was no such thing as clear title or a quick sale.
A law was passed five years ago, requiring local government and banks operating in the Douro Valley to put all real estate transactions from the last seventy-five years online, to make it easier to buy and sell property. Unless they were given special dispensation, the process had to be completed by the end of last year.
“How did you access the bank information?”
“The usual way.”
Meaning either she or Tamar, or perhaps Lucas, hacked into it.
“Who paid off the mortgages?”
“The money was funneled to Vincente through a company called H.A.H. When I asked about it, Lucas told me it was a shell company that belonged to your Uncle Hugo. It no longer exists, but he was able to dig up the ledgers, and I eventually matched a payment made to Vincente a few days before your mother disappeared—although I couldn’t find any direct payment to Afonso.”
Direct payment. But you found something. “What do you mean direct?”
“Afonso had a five-thousand-dollar mortgage. Vincente probably paid him from his own proceeds. I found the withdrawal, but no record of a deposit.”
“How much was the payment to Vincente?”
“Thirty thousand euros.”
My mother’s death was bought for thirty thousand fucking euros. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Rafael. She hasn’t said one definitive thing.
“Lucas also said that Vincente Costa was someone who your father would have turned to if he needed help—with that sort of thing,” she adds in a whisper.
No question. “I don’t disagree. But Afonso didn’t work for either my father or Hugo.”
“No. He was a farmer.”
“Is he still alive?” Say yes. Give me something to hold on to. Someone to torture.
She sighs. “No. But his wife, Maria Elena, is still alive. She lives up north, in the same house.”
“Did you contact her?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“If Antonio’s team had the ledgers all along, why wasn’t the payment discovered before now?”
“The dates on the transactions—at least how they were entered into the ledger—didn’t correspond with any kind of reality. Your father and uncle used that company to hide things in plain sight. They falsified the dates using a code.”
A code—Lexie’s specialty. They were evil, but they weren’t stupid. “And you cracked the code.”
She nods.
“Who else knows about this?”
